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 : AUTOHOME, Inc -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E. Davies who wrote (19234)	1/24/2000 7:47:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Respond to of 29970

"Does @home not use off the shelf routers and switches?" Not in the area of the network that we're discussing, no, they don't. That is, not where their network meets the public distribution segments (i.e., not in the headends towards end users). There, they must traverse the head-end Cable Modem Termination Systems (CMTS) which were designed to the proprietary needs of the cable operator sector (most notably, MSOs). These are hardly produced in the same numbers, nor are they produced by the same high number of vendors who are vying for ordinary IPS's business, which would in turn ensure lower unit costs, and the other usual benefits which are common to comptetitive markets. They do use off-the-shelf in other areas, but only in their interior networks and where they peer with other SPs and where they border the Internet's core. But the focus in this discussion has the last mile, and there, they don't use off-the-shelf. Unless you consider what is on the shelf at a limited number of vendors' warehouses. Besides, it's not even their call as to which product and which vendors they are to use in the H-E, as far as I know. That would ordinarily be the call of the MSO who purchases those wares. ------ Re: scaleable fiber networks for the masses: If you've read the Lightwire reports, you'd note that a key strategy has been to limit the number of endpoints i.e., user nodes) per optical field node so that they don't exceed 50 to 75 homes each. Whether HWP and ORCL along with the utilities have this strategy in mind is impossible for me to say until they reveal their plans. Can they make it egregiously difficult and cumbersome? No doubt. But they'd really need to work at it very hard in order to make it more restrictive than what we have today. The key is not to make use of protocols and schemas which are excessively complex. Instead, the key is in keeping it simple and stupid. When it comes to network smarts, one could coin a phrase and say, "ignorance is bliss."