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.

Strategies & Market Trends : Technical analysis for shorts & longs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Johnny Canuck who wrote (27800)	8/29/2000 3:26:28 PM
From: Johnny Canuck	Respond to of 68181

Future for Gigabit Ethernet: NFOEC : It's not the most widely recognized acronym, but the National Fiber Optics Engineers Conference in Denver this week is reportedly a well-attended event nonetheless. Everything optical has been hot this year -- both the stocks and the conferences. Briefing.com recently attended Opticon2000, but is not at NFOEC this week. We can nevertheless piggyback on brokerage firm reports out of the conference to get a sense of the action. Merrill Lynch this morning offered its thoughts on the event, and we noted many similarities with what was discussed at Opticon. Merrill made three main points. First and most notable, 10 Gigabit Ethernet is the next big thing. Ten GigE was also the topic of much conversation at Opticon. At this point, it is not even a protocol; it is still in the standards phase of development, but equipment based on the 10 GigE is expected to start shipping next year. The promise here is that there might finally be a protocol that marries the LAN and the WAN (local and wide area networks), and that can be a truly international standard (current optical protocols are SONET and SDH, with the former in the US and the latter in Europe). Merrill says that Nortel (NT) and Ciena (CIEN) are potential beneficiaries of 10 GigE. We would note, however, that much skepticism remains concerning 10 GigE, as it has carried over many aspects of SONET and therefore has the potential to be priced similarly to SONET gear, which could undercut what is supposed to be a key advantage -- price. But if 10 GigE gear can win on price, it has huge potential due to the installed physical and knowledge base of Ethernet. We would note that some other potential winners not noted by Merrill include the current IP networking vendors that could suddenly find themselves more competitive in the WAN market: Cisco (CSCO), Extreme (EXTR), and Foundry (FDRY). Merrill's second point is that automated provisioning is key for service providers. This trend is well established, and explains the market's enthusiasm for all-optical switches that are promised by Corvis (CORV), Lucent (LU), Nortel, and Cisco, to name but a few, and the already available optical switches (with electrical fabrics) from Ciena and Sycamore (SCMR). Automated provisioning will also produce a boom in IPOs of optical access companies such as Anda Networks, which recently filed for its IPO. Finally, Merrill noted the disappointing reception for metro DWDM. This too has been recognized all year. Though most still believe there is promise for DWDM in metro networks, it has thus far remained too expensive for metro even while it booms in the core of the network. Metro DWDM might still have a future, but it remains just that -- a future, not a present reality. - Greg Jones, Briefing.com