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Technology Stocks : Ciena (CIEN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (9430)	8/14/2000 12:45:29 PM
From: jghutchison	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12623

Hi Ray, I agree that MEMS is worth watching closely as the potential is enormous. However, the manufacturing kinks appear to be substantial and need to be ironed out, and there will always be the reliability issue of moving parts...alignment, fatigue etc. Perhaps some of this will be addressed by autoprovisioning on failure through intelligent electronics and software. I see the MEMS approach and the hybrid MEMS/electronic fabric switch as second generation optical switch gear. For the here and now, Ciena has an outstanding first-to-market product that is based on ASIC chips capable of 40 G, with great scalability, and future accomodation of the passive optical components,...the mirrors, diffraction gratings, or whatever. I agree that the Calient switch is fascinating. The Nanovation switch appears to offer promise as a third generation product. The market for these switching products is immense. So it does bear close watching. Regards, Jack Hutchison

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (9430)	8/14/2000 6:49:10 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Respond to of 12623

Hi Ray, since my focus on these boards is never skewed to the investment side I'd have to say that I'll stick with MEMS today because for what they do, and because they are the only game in town for the time being, at the scale that they satisfy. Perhaps AVNX and a few others have an answer to some of its capabilities, but I've not seen anything published yet that suggests that MEMS has anything to worry about in the short term. Yes, I do have some hangups about moving parts in opto-electronic domains. And MTBFs. But movable mirrors are filling the bill right now on a large scale like no other technology can, so we'll just have to wait until the solid stuff matures a bit more, I guess. Frank Younghand