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Technology Stocks : Newbridge Networks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: pat mudge who wrote (12692)	8/13/1999 2:13:00 PM
From: Hagar	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18016

relying too heavily on software-based systems The forwarding of data usually (nowadays) occur through hardware (ASICs, FPGAs, custom ICs...) but the control information necessarily needs to be handled in the background. I can't imagine a system that will take (presumably) SNMP commands and process that in hardware. if changes need to be made, they can be done without taking a network down I think part of the problem is that the changes are done on live networks. The changes can force topology changes coupled with circuit re-routing. These systems are designed to do just that. But if something goes awry where the network becomes unstable and control is lost it becomes much more difficult to make controlled changes on the network to repair it. It becomes harder to debug to know what is causing the instability. I would imagine Ascend is furious at MCI right now I'm sure the finger pointing is going both ways.

To: pat mudge who wrote (12692)	8/13/1999 2:57:00 PM
From: Ian@SI	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 18016

Pat, Perhaps one shouldn't be so quick to yield. Your comments regarding the vulnerability of all vendors is well taken. There but for the grace of God. . . First, the carriers and their equipment providers have always stressed reliability rather than cost alone. Not only is the hardware designed for non stop operation, but so is the software. ... from the outset. Not as an afterthought after realizing that one has a strategic flaw in one's products. Until one gets to the line cards, there's at least complete redundancy including hot standbys to prevent the network from ever failing. And you're right, 99.9% reliability of the network is not good enough. Second the data service providers tended to believe that error correction was cheaper, better and more easily achieved. If something fails, just restart it. Who cares. Initially most data transfers were done in batch mode; and the interactive stuff could be recovered before it would impact anything critical. Terry Matthews came from the telephony culture. And IMO, that culture has resulted in a winner that could never come out of the Stratacom or Ascend (Cascade) switches. It's one thing to claim that all complex hardware / software systems are prone to failure. [a completely true statement] It's a totally different thing to say that Terry Matthews hasn't created a better mousetrap because it was designed to be one right from the word go. Terry knew what would be a winner with carriers. And he's done it well. NN has the lion's share of the WAN market with the carriers. Yet the big failures we've heard from those customers are associated with CSCO and ASND's equipment. That leads me to conclude that NN had a superiour strategy, created a superiour product and will be the ultimate winner in this space. I only wish they could manage their company in such a way to satisfy the Street. Ian.