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To: Greg h2o who wrote (18001)	1/7/2000 9:36:00 AM
From: cmg	Respond to of 42804

Avici beats out Cisco, Lucent and Juniper By John Shinal SILICON VALLEY. 4:40 PM EST-Enron Communications will begin testing new networking equipment made by closely held Avici Systems in Enron's telecommunications network and will buy Avici's product if it passes muster, the two companies said. A unit of Houston-based energy provider Enron (nyse: ENE), Enron Communications is building a nationwide voice and data network it hopes to finish by the end of 2000. It plans to wholesale network capacity to other service providers. North Billerica, Mass.-based Avici, which has plans to go public this year, was among a group of startups founded several years ago to develop new equipment known as switch-routers. The gear is designed to send traffic over the Internet faster than existing routers made by Cisco Systems (nasdaq: CSCO) and others. Enron evaluated equipment from Cisco, Juniper Networks (nasdaq: JNPR) and Lucent Technologies (nyse: LU), yet "Avici is the only one that made it to this level of testing," said John Griebling, Enron's vice president of network engineering. "We're committed to working with Avici," Griebling said. Most of Avici's early rivals, including Juniper, have either gone public or have been purchased. Lucent got its switch-routing equipment when it bought Nexabit Networks for $900 million in June. Phone-equipment maker Tellabs (nasdaq: TLAB) bought NetCore for about $500 million last year for a similar product. Closely held Pluris has yet to announce any live network trials for its gear. The fact that Avici beat out much larger rivals in the Enron testing "shows that the company is ahead of its competition as far as terabit routing development goes," said Chris Nicoll, an analyst with the market research firm Current Analysis. Enron will test Avici's gear in parts of its network in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Portland, Ore. It's the second time in two months that Avici has earned the right to conduct live network testing. In November, Williams Communications (nyse: WMS) said it would begin testing Avici's gear alongside optical networking equipment from Sycamore Networks (nasdaq: SCMR) and others. Enron will still use Cisco's most-powerful product, the GSR-12000, in its network, Griebling said. If testing of the Avici TSR is successful, however, it will displace Cisco's gear in the core of Enron's network. "Cisco lost out on this deal. The GSRs are staying, but they'll serve as access platforms for Avici," Nicoll said. Avici parted ways with Nortel Networks (nyse: NT) in July 1999 after takeover talks failed and may hold an initial public offering in 2000 if it's not snapped up by another large equipment maker. "We hope to become part of the public market this year," said Surya Panditi, Avici's president and chief executive. Separately, Panditi said Avici has developed new software that will let network managers add capacity to or remove capacity from different parts of their network automatically. The software will let service providers combine existing network segments to achieve a total capacity greater than that provided by equipment from Avici's rivals, Panditi said. Griebling said Enron will use the software to trade, buy and sell network capacity with other telecommunications service providers.