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

To: Thomas M. who wrote (1087)	2/1/1998 11:46:00 PM
From: blankmind	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1629

Voice as adjunct to data Cerf, Metcalfe ponder solutions to all the 'Net's woes. By Adam Gaffin Network World, 1/28/98 You won't hear Vint Cerf disagreeing with the notion that voice and data networks will eventually merge. But Cerf, senior vice president for Internet architecture and engineering for MCI, said it will not happen overnight. At a discussion with Ethernet inventor Bob Metcalfe at ComNet'98, he predicted that by 2005, MCI will consist of a single large data network handling voice on the side. One of the themes of this year's ComNet, as well as other large industry trade shows, has been the idea that increasingly large, intelligent networks will begin to handle both types of traffic. Cerf said that already 50% of the traffic between Japan and the U.S. consists of data, a figure he predicted will only increase. As that happens, it becomes more economically sensible to move voice over packet networks rather than data over circuit networks, he said. Cerf said this will depend on hardware vendors doing some major work on their devices. "The routers are huffing and puffing [under existing loads]," he said. He predicted more and more routing would be built into hardware, to bring the devices up to wire speed. And vendors will have to begin integrating quality-of-service policies into their platforms so carriers can begin to prioritize traffic on both latency and cost. In a conversation moderated by venture capitalist Stewart Alsop, Metcalfe said the Internet cannot fulfill its promise without near-universal high-speed access. He depicted the current network as a morass of "bottleneck providers," annoying modems and local phone companies that are moving too slowly on such technologies as asymetric digital subscriber line (ADSL). Cerf agreed on the local phone companies. He said he only recently got a 128K bit/sec ISDN connection to his house - and even that took several visits from the local phone company. "Modems are an abomination," Metcalfe said. They put packet switching atop circuit switching and the result is a slow connection. "The modems know this," he said. "The way you can tell the modems know this is the hissing and screeching they make every time [they connect]." "ADSL does not work," Metcalfe said, predicting his local cable company would get him high-speed access sooner than his local phone company will get him DSL. "It's a crying shame that the people sitting on DSL technology are the local exchange carriers," he said. Cerf asked if there were alternatives to cable. "The alternative to cable is, first, you could read a book," Metcalfe cracked. "HTTP is a horrible bottleneck because it's a crummy protocol," Metcalfe added. One technology that may not work to speed up the 'Net is local caching of Web pages, Cerf said. "On the surface it's profound, but deep down it's shallow," because as more Web servers generate pages dynamically, the ability of local machines to cache their content decreases, he said. "An awful lot of the bottlenecks lie on the edges," specifically in Web servers, Cerf said. While parts of the network can handle gigabits of packets per second, many come crashing to a halt at Web servers unable to handle large loads. "Nobody has built for those kinds of scales," he said.

To: Thomas M. who wrote (1087)	2/2/1998 2:41:00 PM
From: Maverick	Respond to of 1629

ASND products TBA in Q2 & Q3 98 1) Voice module for MAX and TNT families. This module will detect SS7 phone signaling to divert voice traffic to voice switches and data traffic to data switches. 2Q98 2) TNT+GRF combo. 2Q98 3) CBX 500+GRF combo. 2Q98 4) High-port-density w/ new venting and chassis TNT II. 2Q98 5) MAX & TNT's support of the new 56k std, V.pcm. 2Q98 6) new GRF that supports popular IP routing protocol to interoperate w/ CSCO routers. 2Q 98. 7) voice module for B-STDX FR switch family. 3Q98. As you can see there will be a flurry of announcement in 2Q 98.

To: Thomas M. who wrote (1087)	2/2/1998 5:43:00 PM
From: Maverick	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1629

Any company associated with the construction of the Internet stands to make a killing in coming years. John W. Sidgmore, vice chairman and chief operating officer of Jackson, Miss.-based WorldCom Inc. (Nasdaq, WCOM), drove the point home with the assertion that capacity for bandwidth, the pipeline of the Internet, is doubling every three to four months. What's more, Sidgmore issued the battle cry for a skirmish that will take the Internet-using world by storm if he's correct: the end of one-size-fits-all pricing for Internet service. ''We can give cheap access locally,'' he says. ''We can't give it internationally.'' So how to solve that? ''You introduce usage-sensitive pricing. I think you're going to see tiered pricing just as a matter of fact.''