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Technology Stocks : Ascend Communications-News Only!!! (ASND) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gary Korn who wrote (1021)	1/23/1998 1:18:00 AM
From: blankmind	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1629

Chernikeeff networks BP Sunbury complex Presswire - January 22, 1998 15:05 M2 PRESSWIRE-22 January 1998-CHERNIKEEFF: Chernikeeff networks BP Sunbury complex(C)1994-98 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD Chernikeeff, the UK's leading independent network integrator, has worked with consulting, systems integration and outsourcing company Sema Group to implement a Ethernet LAN for BP's 38-acre Sunbury site. Serving over 2000 users, the new LAN is based on Cisco Catalyst 5000 Ethernet switches with a Fast Ethernet backbone. Companies based at the Sunbury complex include BP Exploration, Oil, Chemicals and Solar. Implemented as an integral part of BP's new Common Operating Environment (COE) for standard servers, desktops and infrastructure, the new Fast Ethernet/Ethernet LAN replaces an older FDDI/shared Ethernet network. Having successfully replaced the site's FDDI ring in August 1997, current work includes deployment of new 100 Mbps and 10 Mbps shared or switched Ethernet connections and the introduction of VLANS. Chernikeeff's activities included design ratification, supply, configuration, pre delivery testing, training, support and maintenance. "The relationship with Chernikeeff at BP Sunbury is a very valuable one. They are proactive in keeping us up to date with new products," said John Barnes, Principal Consultant, Sema Group UK Business Systems. "This is a second major project involving BP this year. We have worked very closely with the Sema Group at BP Sunbury while at BP Aberdeen we carried out another networking project for SAIC. These two projects underline our continued willingness to work with leading outsourcing companies," added Charles Fountain, Marketing Manager, Chernikeeff. Chernikeeff background information: As the UK's leading independent network integrator, Chernikeeff offer consultancy, design, supply, installation and maintenance services. Covering LAN, WAN, Internet/Intranet, voice/data and IBM SNA environments, its expertise includes switches, routers and remote access. With more than 500 blue chip customers, Chernikeeff is an approved supplier for Ascend, Cisco Systems, CompactData, FORE Systems and Xyplex. Sema Group background information: Sema Group is one of the world's leading information technology companies supporting customers world-wide. The Group is a public limited company (plc) quoted on the London Stock Exchange and the Paris Bourse. Recent UK outsourcing projects include Britannia Building Society, The Home Office, The DSS, Bristol Water, Thames Water, Booker Cash and Carry and National Air Traffic Services. CONTACT: Charles Fountain, Chernikeeff Networks Tel: +44 (0)1932 814800 e-mail: cfountain@chernikeeff.co.uk Samantha Waite, Marketing Administrator, Chernikeeff Networks Limited Tel: +44 (0)1932 814800 Fax: +44 (0)1932 814808 e-mail: swaite@chernikeeff.co.uk

To: Gary Korn who wrote (1021)	1/23/1998 1:51:00 PM
From: Maverick	Respond to of 1629

ISPs plan new voice pitch By Brian Riggs an Internet telephony shirk its image as the PC hobbyist's kludge and take its place in corporate networking? Service providers rolling out telephony services on their public IP networks think so. Internet Telephony eXchange Carrier Corp. (ITXC), PSINet Inc., Qwest Communications International Inc., and others are planning to roll out voice services that run over their Internet backbones and are accessed from standard telephones, not PCs. Network managers can use the services to reduce long-distance and international call costs either by letting individual users dial in to service providers' points of presence (POPs) or by routing corporate PBX traffic through the same access lines that connect LANs to the Internet. But the various approaches to Internet telephony services still have drawbacks that either significantly slow service deployment or make voice quality nearly impossible to guarantee. As a result, telephony over the Internet may be a long distance away from many network managers' voice plans. Internet telephony services are typically handled in one of two ways: Kept on a single vendor's network, or routed from one ISP (Internet service provider) to another over the Internet. Although the former gives the network vendor more control and produces better voice quality, it also greatly limits availability. In the first camp is Qwest, a Denver-based backbone operator that, this month, plans to offer Internet-based voice services to business and residential customers. By keeping nearly all telephony traffic on its state-of-the-art OC-192 (9.6Gbps)-speed backbone, Qwest says it can deliver voice quality and reliability equal to that of the public switching telephone network (PSTN). PSINet has a similar strategy for the packetized voice services to be offered this spring by a soon-to-be-formed subsidiary, PSINet Telecommunications. Voice packets will run on prioritized circuits within PSINet's OC-12 (622Mbps) fiber network.

To: Gary Korn who wrote (1021)	1/23/1998 1:52:00 PM
From: Maverick	Respond to of 1629

ISP plans new voice, Part II By not passing off telephony traffic to other ISPs, Qwest and PSINet hope to eliminate, or at least decrease, network delay, which can degrade the quality of voice signals when they travel over packet networks. But this "go-it-alone" approach makes it difficult for ISPs to make voice services widely available, according to industry experts. "It's going to take years and years to get the equipment in place to deploy services like this," said John Coons, director and principal analyst at Dataquest, a market-research company based in San Jose, Calif. For example, Qwest initially anticipates making services available to corporate and residential customers in nine metropolitan areas in the United States, with widespread availability expected by 1999. And Deutsche Telekom AG, which began Internet telephony service trials last year, can only carry calls between a few cities in England, Germany, Japan, and the United States. The second approach to Internet telephony--which is intended to speed up an otherwise slow service-deployment process--is for ISPs to form international alliances with one another. For example, rather than offering telephony services itself, ITXC plans to act as a middleman to certified ISPs around the world. Next month, ITXC will begin field trials of its WWeXchange Service, which will provide call routing, account settlement, and authorization services to ISPs that pass voice packets to and from each others' networks (see "Handoff," right). Similarly, Delta Three, the Internet telephony subsidiary of global service provider RSL Communications Ltd., is forming alliances with local ISPs to increase availability of its telephony services, which are already available in 16 countries. This month, Japan's leading ISP, Nifty Corp., said it will offer Delta Three telephony to its 2.5 million customers. And NetWorks Telephony Corp., which later this year plans to release a LAN version of its PC-based telephony software, offers international telephony services over multiple ISPs' networks. But the trade-off to rapid service deployment by carrying traffic over multiple networks is reduced voice quality and possible diminished network reliability.

To: Gary Korn who wrote (1021)	1/23/1998 1:53:00 PM
From: Maverick	Respond to of 1629

ISP plans new voice, part III It is very difficult to avoid [Internet] congestion points. We will always have that problem" if traffic is carried over multiple providers' networks, said David Ruberg, CEO of Intermedia Communications Inc., a Tampa, Fla.-based telco in the process of migrating all voice traffic to its ATM backbone network. Evolution Internet telephony has come a long way since the days when traffic was sent and received by multimedia-equipped PCs. In contrast, the services now being deployed by ISPs require little or no integration with PCs. Voice traffic is carried from standard telephone handsets that send voice traffic either through the corporate PBX or directly to a gateway operated by an ISP. On the receiving end, voice traffic can be terminated on a standard handset. The phone-to-phone services being deployed by ISPs and telcos, while still not as reliable as the PSTN, provide high enough quality at low enough prices for corporations to consider them as a way to cut long-distance and international calling costs, according to service providers. For example, Qwest plans to charge 7.5 cents per minute regardless of destination, and Deutsche Telekom prices start at about 24 cents per minute for calls from London to Washington. For this reason, Internet telephony services are expected to be used by companies willing to sacrifice consistent voice quality for inexpensive long-distance and international calls. "There is some noise in the background from time to time, but [business customers'] response was that the quality is good enough," said Deutsche Telekom spokesman Hans Ehnert in Bonn, Germany. Myth dialing But corporations' willingness to sacrifice reliable, high-quality voice traffic--even between corporate offices--may largely be a myth. PSINet customers have already voiced concern about completely abandoning the PSTN in favor of the Internet, according to Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Pete Wills in Herndon, Va.

To: Gary Korn who wrote (1021)	1/23/1998 1:55:00 PM
From: Maverick	Respond to of 1629

ISP plans, Part IV "Customers are very interested in IP telephony, but they want control over which call goes which way and why," he said. "They want to move at their own pace into IP telephony." To address this concern, PSINet plans to deploy customer premises equipment that will let corporate network managers choose whether telephony traffic runs over PSINet's IP backbone or the PSTN. Users on the network will be able to talk from PC to PC, phone to phone, and eventually, on-Net handset to off-Net handset, according to Wills. But such efforts will not resolve overall Internet reliability, and it is reliable voice service that companies demand, according to Brett Curtis, network design engineer at Omnus, a Houston-based systems integrator that designs and manages network infrastructures over which multinational oil companies send multimedia traffic. Earlier this year, congestion on Omnus' public frame-relay network crippled its voice services to several international locations. The problem was that the Motorola Corp. equipment on which the system is based erroneously flagged prioritized voice packets as "discard eligible." "Our client was irate. He either wanted to fire us or pay by the syllable because not many syllables were getting through," Curtis said. Based on this experience, Curtis said that he would not want to send voice traffic over public IP networks over which he exercises no technical control. "When people pick up the phone they want it to work. They don't care how the traffic is carried, but if it does not work they get pissed off," he said. For more information, contact Delta Three in New York at (212) 588-3670, rslcom.com; Intermedia at (813) 829-0011, intermedia.com; ITXC in North Brunswick, N.J., at (732) 940-4333, itxc.com; NetWorks Telephony in El Segundo Calif., at (310) 563-3900, networkstelephony.com; PSINet at (703) 904-4100, psi.net; and Qwest at (303) 299-9200, qwest.com.

To: Gary Korn who wrote (1021)	1/26/1998 5:49:00 PM
From: Maverick	Respond to of 1629

'Net gets ATM lift WorldCom hopes to ease Internet congetst with third major MAE. By Denise Pappalardo and Sandra Gittlen Network World, 1/26/98 Washington, D.C. - An overburdened Internet will get some welcome relief at this week's ComNet '98 show when WorldCom, Inc. announces it is building a third major Metropolitan Area Exchange (MAE). MAE-Central, which MAE proprietor WorldCom is building in Dallas, will help ensure that Internet traffic passes from one Internet service provider to an-other safely and with some measure of speed. WorldCom inherited oversight of the MAEs when it acquired MFS Communications Co. more than one year ago. This Tier 1 MAE will be WorldCom's first exchange based solely on Cisco Systems, Inc.'s StrataCom BPX ATM switches. WorldCom is buying 16 BPX switches for its three MAEs. WorldCom's other two Tier 1 MAEs, MAE-East and MAE-West, primarily use Digital Equipment Corp.'s FDDI GIGAswitches. But FDDI, by most ISP standards, has fallen short on offering adequate access by most ISP standards. n fact, WorldCom spent $5 million last year to upgrade its MAEs with additional switches, and intends to spend $5 million more this year (NW, Nov. 10, 1997, page 12). WorldCom will buy 16 BPX switches that will be used in its three MAEs. [I identified this opportunity in a post last year. Can the sales force explain why ASND didn't secure this contract ? Please read nwfusion.com]

To: Gary Korn who wrote (1021)	1/26/1998 5:57:00 PM
From: Maverick	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1629

Excerpts of an Eric Benhamou's interview on Convergence brings richer data netwok Published Monday, January 26, 1998, in the San Jose Mercury News Q The last round of convergence predictions -- which focused on the merger of TV, telephone and computer -- didn't exactly work out. Why will it be any different this time? A What I'm talking about here is a convergence of infrastructure, and it is anchored in very, very solid economics. This is not consumer emotions. This is not a fad. Today, there are very, very sound economic reasons why you would want to move a portion, if not all, of your voice network onto your data network. You save in terms of (equipment) cost. You save in terms of operational costs. You actually could easily slash your phone bill by 30 to 50 percent now that you have data network infrastructure. Q What do consumers gain here? Is it simply a matter of cost? A What I've spoken about so far pertains primarily to the IT (information technology) organization. However, the consumer should also see massive amounts of cost savings. I don't know how many Internet subscribers there were as of the end of 1997. I'm going to venture a guess that in the United States, it was probably in excess of 30 million users. These 30 million users are getting their Internet service from some kind of ISP (Internet service provider). These ISPs, beginning this year -- not five years from now, but beginning this year -- will begin to offer richer services, fax services, telephony services on top of their existing service. In other words, not requiring a second line, but on top of the existing line, so consumers will be able to begin to tap into the benefits of (Internet) telephony without having to make a lot of investments on their own. And, by the way, so far I have mostly emphasized economic benefits. There are other benefits which are, perhaps, a little harder to measure, but they have to do with the fact that new things are possible if voice, video, and data are available on the same physical plant and also on the same circuits. It makes it possible for you, for example, to surf through the Web, and you wander around and explore a site. Q Does this kind of service require an increase in bandwidth to the home?

To: Gary Korn who wrote (1021)	1/26/1998 6:00:00 PM
From: Maverick	Respond to of 1629

Q Do you see the local telephone companies as having the inside track in this consolidation of ISPs? A Well, they have these financial muscles to be able to do that, and I personally believe that one of the best ways for RBOCs (regional Bell operating companies) to, in fact, survive and continue to be strategic, is to start separating the ISP portion of the RBOC and run it more as an entrepreneurial company, as a fast-moving company. I believe that those organizations that provide plain old telephone service are always going to be suffering from major cultural and regulatory handicap that will prevent them from driving the industry. So if you're the head of an RBOC, of an SBC, I think you have to essentially begin to break down your business into the future businesses versus the businesses of the past. The future businesses will include ISPs and such things as network integration and professional services, and the rest, basically, is going to be subsumed over time by new technologies and new companies. Q The thing that is giving me pause about the new guys is that so far, nobody is trying to occupy the consumer space. Do you see the price points of things like DSL and other high speed technologies coming down to what people are used to paying today for 56K access? A Not in a while. These businesses, particularly the new companies, have to be able to make money. You cannot just run at a loss for a long, long time in this business, and right now, the reality of the fact that there is a cost of investment of infrastructure build-up to be made to be spent, and to recover some of this cost we have to have higher rates for awhile.