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Technology Stocks : The *NEW* Frank Coluccio Technology Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (1624)	12/31/2000 5:04:18 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Respond to of 46821

Hi Ken, "... why are some very smart people continuing to spend millions of dollars on MEMS research and MEMS trials?" Not to sound smug, and certainly not meaning to sound sarcastic, but I could ask the same question about a half dozen other platforms -without even giving it much thought- and approaches to networking solutions that I don't agree with. And I do voice those opinions here, frequently. But you ask about MEMS, so... IMO, the MEMS approach to lambda switching and aggregation is merely an expedient at this juncture. In its favor, it has the weight of gurus (who have never stepped behind a network control terminal, or had to answer a beep at 3 in the morning because of a major network meltdown), journos (who are several giant steps behind the gurus, waiting for the latter's next predictions) and top-tier vendors behind it. Some of whom have been known to make the most fatal of decisions in optical networking in the past. Most notably, but only because of the most obvious of criteria they breached, LU. There are others who've skated by making similarly dumb decisions, unnoticed. Having stated that, since LU and NT have gone into MEMS with both feet, they have in a way given the technology their imprimaturs, endorsing it as a fairly safe bet going forward, from a technology selection risk perspective. Since these two cos are the largest among carrier infrastructure vendors, others either are inclined to follow suit, or give the technology serious consideration. But it still doesn't make MEMS either viable, over the longer term, or even an optimal solution in the face of other alternatives based on planar (and other) approaches that are now showing signs that they are about to make an appearance, soon. The article that ftth posted was an eye opener for me in many ways, because some of the very low level arguments that the author made - the ones that actually talked about workplace conditions and board-level I/O considerations - like the non-uniformity of signal levels coming from lambdas whose very sources and destinations are unpredictable, hence, neither are their signal strengths predictable, and the inability of the MEMS platforms to control or manage those lambdas. These were issues that I never fully explored in the past, but in retrospect find that they are right on. Ironically, these principles that he spoke of predate even digital transmission, with roots going back to basic a.m. carrier theory, first developed in the 1920s and 30s. Don't get me wrong. I'm not entirely naive, and I read "everything" these days with a very large grain of salt, especially when an author writes from his own opposing perch carrying their own self-serving interests, as I suspect has taken place here, too, to some extent. But many of the authors assertions in this instance were directly in line with views I've maintained all along, reinforced by more than just a couple of years of transmission experience in the wilds of public networking. I was hoping that you or someone else would offer an opposing set of views, in the event that both the author and I are all wet. Which has been known to happen at times. FAC