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Technology Stocks : Newbridge Networks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: pat mudge who wrote (3579)	3/10/1998 11:28:00 AM
From: Doug	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18016

Pat: I eagerly look forward to that assistance since I need to plug that knowledge gap.! Thx.

To: pat mudge who wrote (3579)	3/10/1998 2:49:00 PM
From: Mark R	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 18016

Pat, This may too simple of an answer as I am not an engineer either but... Silicon based switches take advantage of very fast performance yet they are less changable/programmable as any S/W centric system. My experience tells me that early products in the early stage of the markets are more S/W centric due to the need for rapid evolution of standards, features and interoperability. As the technology matures and becomes more commoditized the silicon (ASIC) products provide lower costs and higher performance. By the way...I think most products have both, it's just which way they are biased. Cisco owes a lot of its router success to being able to offer all of the protocols being used in current networks via S/W. Now thats it's become a primarily IP world, switch vendors can build fast switches to existing standards. ATM still has a way to go to really call its standards mature but the premium on performance here is higher than normal thus the majority of products are switches that are as silicon based as possible without being obsoleted by ongoing standards/features development. Very tricky. IMO Mark