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To: Joe Wagner who wrote (31189)	9/7/2000 9:38:03 PM
From: BDR	Respond to of 54805

<<Rundown on Sorrento Networks at Supercom last June>> Is Sorrento delivering product now to quiet the naysayers? It seems to have a controversial past/present. From an even older piece on the company: >>>>>> lightreading.com MAY 04, 2000 Sorrento: Hot Product or Hot Air? Yesterday Sorrento Networks, Inc. sorrentonet.com announced TeraMatrix, an all-optical wavelength switching router for metro networks. At first glance the Teramatrix smells like more vapor-ware to go along with the company's equally ambitious 64 channel Gigamux DWDM developments, announced last week. (see Sorrento Puffs Itself Up For An IPO ). However, that doesn't really stack up with other news coming out of the company -- that it's hired a lot of staff and got some serious financial backing. What makes us wonder whether Teramatrix is anything more than a Powerpoint presentation? >>>>>> Shareholders not happy with Sorrento's parent corp., Osicom: lightreading.com SEPTEMBER 06, 2000 Osicom Investors Rebel Osicom Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq: FIBR) says it wants to unlock the shareholder value of its Sorrento Networks Inc. subsidiary. But on a conference call with money managers and analysts Wednesday, all Osicom managers could unlock was the pent-up frustration of their shareholders. During the hour-long call, which seemed to last all afternoon, Osicom managers endured a steady stream of verbal abuse, as shareholders lambasted company leadership and second-guessed Osicom's decision not to take Sorrento public. "I would think you'd be better off having high school students as board members than you are having anyone with any prior association with Osicom," said Thomas Barton, a general partner at White Rock Capital, a Dallas-based hedge fund.

To: Joe Wagner who wrote (31189)	9/7/2000 10:05:28 PM
From: EJhonsa	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 54805

The irresponsibility shown by the marketing departments of certain optical switch vendors is truly phenomenal. The number of otherwise technically astute investors and writers they've fooled regarding the optical switch vs. router issue must be in the tens of thousands. Let me go over the differences: what Sorrento, not to mention Monterrey, ONI, and Lucent are talking about when they flaunt their "wavelength routers" is an optical switch. What these so-called routers actually do is move around the beams of light upon which internet traffic is sent upon, from one optical fiber to another. These beams are akin to the tracks on a railroad system. The packets of data that travel on these optical beams can be considered to be the trains that travel on these railroads. At network junctions, these packets have to be sorted out and told upon which tracks they should go. In other words, they have to be processed; and just as the Pentium or the Athlon within your PC has to process the information sent to it electronically, the same goes for the devices that process these packets of data. That is, unless someone invents an optical computer, a concept that's purely science fiction for now. The devices that electronically process these packets, or rather their headers, which detail where they have to be sent, are better known as IP routers. You know, the boxes that companies like Cisco and Juniper make. I don't think that demand for these boxes will be going away any time soon. Eric PS - Here's the latest market share numbers for the router market. Juniper continues to chip away: soapbox.com

To: Joe Wagner who wrote (31189)	9/7/2000 11:18:32 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Isn't this TERAMATRIX an Optical Router Joe, I see that you question has already been answered by people who know more about it than I do. The giveaway is the "switching router" which tells you that these marketing bastards know they are trying to con you. I guess they figure they can fool some "suits", and maybe some investors. I was taught 25 years ago that the definition of "impossible" was: An attempt to violate a Law of Nature Under that definition, I believe that an optical router is impossible.

To: Joe Wagner who wrote (31189)	9/8/2000 5:36:02 AM
From: DownSouth	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 54805

Joe, I see you have gotten some responses to the 'optical router' question, but I got up early so I deserve a stab at it. It appears to me that what Sorrento is describing in their glossy press releases is the ability to change the path of the optical network configuration, re-allocating bandwidth. This is not the same as packet "switching", which requires analysis of the data packets as they flow through the network and switching the pat of the individual packets based on traffic conditions and the destination of the individual packets. No one has come up with the basic science required to analyze the data being transmitted as a light signal without first converting that light signal to an electrical signal. Until that basic science is developed, there will not be any pure optical switch. Using the train switch analogy, what Sorrento is doing is allowing the network admin to switch the track so that any trains coming down that track take a particular path. The net admin still doesn't know what trains are taking that path, what the individual cars on that train contain, nor what their final destination is. He just switched the track.