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To: D. Newberry who wrote (27963)	7/15/2000 12:36:35 AM
From: Thomas Mercer-Hursh	Respond to of 54805

this is their answer to the voice and data convergence issue This reminds me of a "funny" story... possibly a case of less is new than seems to be. Seven or eight years ago I had a customer headquartered in CA with a warehouse in NJ and the time came to get them on a shared system. I contacted a networking type I trusted and he set me up with some bridge equipment, not Cisco. The reason for selecting this particular box over some alternatives was, in part, the fact that one could include two POTS channels along with the data and that unlike other equipment of the era which mixed the voice in with the data on a competitive basis, this equipment provided a specific spectrum. I.e., if the voice was in use, it got a given minimum guaranteed bandwidth (i.e., quality) and the worst that could happen if everything was in use at the same time was that the data was funneled through a 48K pipe instead of a 64K pipe. Worked like a champ. Problem number one was that yours truly had set this up on a competitive bid arrangement and the leased line came from someone other than the company providing the rest of the telephone service. Unknown to me, the talked the company to switch to them only they made a small error and the line which had been costing $1K/month was now costing $3K/month because they had moved to a metered service instead of a fixed cost leased line. But, buried in an overall telephone bill, no one noticed. Problem number two was that the customer and I had a strained period of greater distance, now thankfully cured. During this period they moved buildings and contracted with a networking company to set things up in the new facility. The highly incompetent networking company (you wouldn't believe the security holes they left!) noticed the 3K and said, "oh, we can do much better". But, instead of simply reinstalling the leased line structure, the brought in Cisco equipment and converted to frame relay. Now, in addition to the equipment cost they were back around the $1K level, but they had a 32K pipe and no voice. They are still figuring this out. Moral being that what is possible is not always what is really driving what people buy.