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Technology Stocks : MRV Communications (MRVC) opinions? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BlueCrab who wrote (16850)	11/13/1999 5:34:00 PM
From: whitephosphorus	Respond to of 42804

We have fewer moving parts but the CMGI model would seem to have some validity.......

To: BlueCrab who wrote (16850)	11/13/1999 6:02:00 PM
From: Sector Investor	Respond to of 42804

Some interesting Red-C information that Kaka from Yahoo! found somewhere. I formatted it a bit for better readability. Another post with more information will follow. I encourage everyone to read these posts for better insight into the issues providers face and how Red-C helps them. <<Excerpt from Red-C publicity, literally from Red Sea Networks Regards, KK2 >> "Subscriber Services So, what are the subscriber management features that help the service provider to begin and then grow its broadband service offerings? To begin we must understand more about how a typical broadband connection is currently offered, and how this needs to be modified to enable the introduction of our new services. A typical DSL installation runs like this: The customer orders their service, the provider schedules line provisioning and when that is ready, they schedule the installation at the customer site. The customer may find three individuals from the provider turning up at their home (hopefully at the same day). One to install an Ethernet NIC into their PC (and give it an IP address), one to install the DSL modem (and give that an IP address), and one to install a splitter so that the telephone line can also be used for regular telephone service on top of DSL (this is an option of course). Then they turn the service on and leave. Whenever the customer uses the PC, they now find they have a permanent high speed internet connection. Without much thought this actually sounds ideal, but there are some serious issues, and problems that restrict the service offerings available. Consider some of the following: # Two fixed IP addresses are given to the customer. What happens when the provider needs to address their address scheme or they run out of addresses? # If the connection is always on, what about security? Who knows who is trying to hack the consumer PC? # If the connection is always on, how does the provider handle over-provisioning? # How do they provide different levels of service to different household needs (say parents and children)? # What about firewalls? # What about QoS for business connections? # How about just change the service options? The Red-C is designed to make this possible; we can use the following techniques: # NAT and DHCP can be used to manage IP addresses. # Ensuring that each user must authenticate each session is the simplest form of security. # With an authentication method the user is only on when they actually want to send data. # Each user in a household is given an individual account name. # Firewalls can be added as a service offering. # QoS can be added as a service offering.

To: BlueCrab who wrote (16850)	11/13/1999 6:05:00 PM
From: Sector Investor	Respond to of 42804

More information from Yahoo! "Business Case. The Red-C OSS offers opportunities for cost savings and increased revenues to the broadband service provider. Cost savings come from the ability to use one system to integrate multiple interfaces from broadband termination systems, to easily provision new users, to easily reconfigure users from one system to another and to offload routers. Increased revenues will come with offering value-added "pay-for" services. Currently most broadband network architectures have DSLAMs and CMTSs' connecting directly to their own routers or indirectly through ATM switches at the CO. The Red-C System can consolidate these interfaces with its ability to offer interfaces for any of the DSL or cable systems. The Red-C System provides ethernet, Frame Relay over T1, Frame Relay over ATM or ATM over DS3, or ATM over OC3. There can be multiple interfaces simultaneously to both DSLAMs and CMTSs'. The Red-C System can offload existing routers that may be performance bound at the CO by performing the processor intensive connection management functions of authentication and IP. Alternatively, with its mature OSPF and BGP-4 protocol support, the Red-C System can also perform the routing functions for smaller providers. Either way, the provider saves cost by not having to upgrade its router or by eliminating the need to buy an expensive router when setting up a new installation. If a provider has an easy way to provision new users or reconfigure users, costs are saved in time. The Red-C System uses subscriber records to identify the end users for the provider. There is a default record that can be used as the template for the new user. With an HTML interface, the record can easily be modified to add any special features for the new user. The system can support the recognition of new users and, *with an application that can be added to the open system* by the provider; a new user can be automatically added to the system."**

To: BlueCrab who wrote (16850)	11/13/1999 6:41:00 PM
From: Sector Investor	Respond to of 42804

I thought I was done, but Kaka added more while I was doing the last two posts. More form Yahoo! "The OSS Database. The basis of the OSS is a subscriber database that is maintained locally or in conjunction with a Radius server. The subscriber records include access and provisioning information, IP addressing information and path information. A subscriber record can be accessed by user-name/password, an IP address, or a VPI/VCI permanent virtual circuit identifier. The access information includes user-ID and password data and access-control information that will work with content filtering to limit access to specific locations. For example, a residence with multiple users might have one user with full internet access while the children in the family might have a list of sites whose access was prohibited to them. The service provisioning characteristics of the subscriber record include Quality of Service (QoS) data, bandwidth allocation parameters, and time-of-day service data. For example, a child in a residence may have his access to the ineternet blocked between 7pm and 8am. The QoS options that are offered within the Red-C OSS include ATM QoS and traffic shaping and priority queuing. Prioritization of traffic can be managed according to network protocol, incoming interface, source/destination address, port and mask. There are 8 levels of priority. With this, a provider can offer service levels based on traffic type. For example, voice traffic can be queued at a higher priority than e-mail. By adding priority queuing to ATM QoS, a provider has another way to enhance his service options to subscribers. The Red-C OSS offers both Weighted Random Early Detection (WRED) and Weighted Fair Queuing (WFQ) options for priority queuing. One of the subscriber attributes is the type of queuing service that will be enabled for his sessions." "Random Early Detection (RED) was one of the first congestion avoidance methods employed. This queuing method is recommended for router software implementations that will connect to the Internet. WRED is an enhanced version of RED that allows one to take into account the priority of a packet. A priority/ class must be assigned to a packet before it can be determined how it is treated as it is passed through the router; WRED makes the best attempt to allot queuing resources according to priority. The weight factor or value associated with a priority/class is used when computing the average queue length. The weight can either be used to effect the maximum threshold value or actually slow the rate of increase of the average queue size of higher priority packets. Weighted Fair Queuing (WFQ) gives low volume traffic flows preference and then allocates the higher-volume traffic to the remaining amount of capacity. The fairness aspect ensures that larger volume traffic flows do not starve off smaller volume traffic. Security is another feature of the OSS. Secure tunnels with hardware IPSec or L2TP are feature selections for subscribers in the OSS that provide secure access between the user and its destination. This is a particularly important feature for subscribers who connect to their corporation through the Red-C. The system also provides a Secure ARP service. This service responds to subscriber ARP requests only if they arrive with proper source information. They must originate from the IP source address of the subscriber record and must be received on the correct path. This eliminates the potential of spoof attacks. The IP addressing information can be used to determine the manner in which the IP addresses are assigned to the subscriber. This can be static through the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), or with Network Address Translation (NAT). Thus a subscriber may have a pernmanent IP address, one that is assigned to the session through IPCP negotiation I PPP, or one(s) that are associated with a permanent virtual circuit (PVC). In the case of PVC, a pool of addresses can be specified so that multiple users can be identified within one session. The subscriber is associated with a Virtual Network Partition (VNP) that runs as a virtual router in the Red-C System. Each partition has its own routing protocol (Static Routes, RIP, OSPF, or BGP-4). No information is shared between VNPs. This partitioning can enable the Red-C provider to support the subscribers of different providers. For example, this gives a provider the ability to offer different services particular to a particular ISP (e.g. billing and access control) and maintain administrative control for that ISP access. These services would be associated with the partition. Subscribers who were users of this ISP would be assigned to the partition. This partitioning also gives a subscriber the opportunity to sign up for multiple services. For example, the subscriber could have a service for one ISP in partition A and another service for access to his corporation in partition B. The matching of subscriber to partition is accomplished with the user logon." "The architectural overview of the Red-C System is shown in the following diagram. [Use your imagination here: Partition Record with {Radius attributer, Admin Info, DHCP Options, Access Control List, Interface List and Accounting Options} connected to Virtual Network Partition with Virtual Router over Interface and Circuit, with inputs from Subscriber Record {DHCP/NAT, IP Access Group, IP ARP, IP Source Validation, Username, Password, PPP MTU Size, Rate Limit, ATM Profile (Buffers, Counters, CLP Bit, Service Type (UBR, VBR, CBR)}] When a subscriber logs onto the system with PPP or PPPoE (PPP over Ethernet), the subscriber record is accessed either locally, or through Radius attributes. There is a matching Radius Attribute for every attribute in the local database. The decision to use the local database or Radius is an attribute of the partition. The subscriber's call related attributes are associated with a Circuit or a Call for accumulating status and statistics. The access attributes are associated with an interface within the partition"