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Strategies & Market Trends : Rande Is . . . HOME -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: darline cook who wrote (14549)	11/9/1999 12:30:00 PM
From: Rande Is	Respond to of 57584

. . . . . . . . . . . Router Wars. . . . . . . . . . . . Cisco [CSCO] has been the undisputed king of routers. However, Cabletron Systems [CS] routers have been rated by many to be a superior product to the Cisco system. CS was a sleeper buy over the summer that rose from single digits to where it sits now over $20 per share. Meanwhile, there are others that wish to play in the router game. And why not? Without routers, we have no way to "surf" the net. . . they are the traffic cops that seamlessly direct all those ones and zeros to the right place. The current technology has the fibre-optic light signal converting back down into and electronic form that it can then be "switched" to a different "route" [hence the names 'switchers' and 'routers']. But Nortel Networks [NT] feeling a bit left out lately, blurts out, "who needs routers? I'll bet we can put the whole process on a chip." To which Cisco laughs, basically saying, "give it your best shot, pal." [spoken in a hoarse Johnny Cash voice over some cornball honky-tonk music] And while these three shoot it out to the smell of stale bear and sound of an old out of tune tack piano on a roll. . .the saloon doors swing open . . .and with a blinding light from behind, in walks the stranger. But this hombre's no stranger to routers. Bell Labs were its folks. . and they still hold many of these patents. And just as the Cisco Kid, Tron, Nortel and the anal-yst bartender begin to recognize the face, the stranger speaks out in a deep thunderous tone, "They call me Lucent. . .but you can call me LU." The stranger is bearing a weapon that nobody has ever seen before. Instead of converting light back to signal, or simulating the process on chips, LU redirects the light via a matrix of mirrors, so it never needs conversion. This allows Lucent's router to handle data at the speed of light. . . certainly Millenium ready. And as Lucent reaches for its guns, which are slated for summer 2000 delivery, the words that could finally cut the Cisco Kid down to size, echo throughout the land. "This town's not big enough for the two of us," says LU. But the Cisco Kid is no pushover. This war will not end here. . .not today. . .but will continue on through the coming years. Lucent's words shook the markets, which have held the Cisco Kid high on a pedestal. But the proof is in the pudding. . . whatever that means! Today, my money went down . . .on the new kid in town. Rande Is