Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Herc who wrote (4499)	7/7/1999 2:47:00 PM
From: Stephen L	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

Any thoughts on CIENA's viability.

To: Herc who wrote (4499)	7/7/1999 2:55:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

Herc, re: Redback [RBAK] It could be related to an item I read about, yesterday. RBAK is providing a Subscriber Management System which supposedly enables multiple ISPs onto the same cable system, thus enabling "open access." You may have read about the recent GTE demo in Clearwater? I don't know what to make out of that. The article is copied below. Regards, Frank Coluccio ============================================= Copyright 1999 CMP Media Inc. July 5, 1999 HEADLINE: Open Audition For Open Access -- Cable Industry To GTE: Don't Quit Your Day Job The Clearwater trial, which offers 50 GTE cable customers a choice of three ISPs, is being hailed as a victory for open access by some, while the cable industry is shrugging it off as a public relations grandstand play that conveniently avoids many of the issue's thorniest technical issues. The linchpin of the trial is the Subscriber Management System 1000 from RedBack Networks Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) placed at the periphery of GTE's cable network. The SMS 1000 reads the headers of incoming packets and delivers them to one of three ISPs. Communication between data gear at the cable network's central office (CO) and the customer's modem is unaffected, according to GTE officials. The cable industry, however, ridicules the Clearwater test. It concedes that open access across hybrid fiber/coax (HFC) is technically possible but says the test proves next to nothing. "In the end, after we see a couple of dozen ISPs and a few thousand customers using this service-if they can recruit that many-we'll see how satisfied the customers are," says Excite@Home Corp. (Redwood City, Calif.) chief technical officer (CTO) Milo Medin. The Clearwater test demonstrates a number of ways in which open access can be accomplished, including the creation of point-to-point protocol (PPP) tunnels to the ISP starting at either the modem or the Redback device, says Al Parisian, director of business development for GTE's broadband data services. But cable industry advocates say broad deployment of an end-to-end tunneling strategy from an ISP to a modem will require that drivers be added to the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) to run efficiently. These drivers currently aren't required in DOCSIS, says Medin. Moreover, additional changes would be necessary in versions of DOCSIS designed to support voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and other advanced applications. And yet, says Parisian, end-to-end tunneling is being used in Clearwater without incident: "It's working. I don't know what else to tell you." The trial avoids other "what if" issues, says Medin. If an ISP monitors its service down to the cable modem, how can it be kept from "eavesdropping" on neighboring modems controlled by other ISPs? If multiple ISPs are running on a system, will users be allowed to momentarily burst beyond their allotted bandwidth, as they do now in single-ISP setups? If so, what additions will be made necessary in management software? What if a single ISP controls the network and a user momentarily bursts beyond allotted spectrum? Can the management system ensure that other customers do not suffer? What motivation does one ISP have to not overstep its bounds on a consistent basis? Resolving these questions, says Medin, will require an entirely new layer of management software. These concerns are all red herrings, say GTE officials. The number of ISPs involved in this type of provisioning, they say, is completely irrelevant in the local loop portion of the network. "Cable executives are trying to needlessly marry channel management on the local loop with the number of ISPs that packets are destined to go to," Parisian says. In the final analysis, even the engineers agree that technological realities will be just one of many factors on which policy makers will base their decisions. "I don't think this is an issue about technology," says Jim Chiddix, CTO of Time Warner Cable (Stamford, Conn.). "The really important issues are regulatory."