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Technology Stocks : Ciena (CIEN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: craig crawford who wrote (1663)	3/3/1998 12:04:00 PM
From: blankmind	Respond to of 12623

Pirelli is a little strange. They always have picutres of topless women on their homepage. - craig crawford do you know if pirelli has shown any correlation between the flesh and the motorcycles and how much this increases sales?

To: craig crawford who wrote (1663)	3/3/1998 4:13:00 PM
From: Tim Bagwell	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12623

Another important result from OFC this year has to do with the so called "all optical network". In a paper presented by E. Goldstein from AT&T Research (this discussion is also published in an article in the Feb. Lightwave magazine) transparent networks (another name for the AON) probably don't make sense either from a technical point of view or from an economic point of view. Their conclusion is that trying to provide optical transparency over long distances is laden with technical problems since small imperfections in the network tend to grow as the transparent length grows. It's much easier to overcome these problems by providing "transponders" (optical to electrical conversion and vice versa) at regular intervals. The transponders have the effect of regenerating the signals while minimizing certain types of distortion in the network. The transparent network is also stymied from an economic standpoint since the service carrier is further burdened and carries a liability for maintaining what would be a very high quality transmission path. The use of transponders minimizes the requirements on the system and lowers overall operational costs. Plus, and this is a very big plus, it allows multiple vendors to supply equipment with a common interface. So the notion of an "all optical network" that has been put forth by such notables as George Gilder flies in the face of reality. The AON in all likelyhood will never happen. WDM will survive fine using transponder like architectures and Ciena will not be any worse off. This seems to parallel the view that Ciena is taking which means that they have not wasted money on R&D related to the AON concept. This is not the case for other more lofty organizations who aren't so concerned about guessing wrong.