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Technology Stocks : Cabletron Systems (CS: NYSE) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 4finger who wrote (3229)	3/23/1998 5:12:00 PM
From: NetWiz	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 8358

From my "front line perspective", things still look a bit immature in the layer 3 switching arena. But I strongly believe that it will mature no later than 1999 and become a prosperous investment. Cabletrons acquisition of Yago systems just might give Cabletron a really competitive edge. But not for some time to come. There is a lot of work to be done, just to get the Yago box running as is, and then a lot more work to get it integrated into Cabletrons product line. The 15 or so Yago boxes that exist today are very limited in comparison to 3Com's or Cisco's products for example. Although I believe they have a good base to work with, I dont think it will be ready for prime-time before other vendors get a chance to grab the market with both hands, but if Cabletron executes with a B- to A+, the long term should be positive. On the other hand, Cisco has always been the routing giant, and a layer 3 switch is really just a fast router. Cabletron has a lot to worry about when Cisco starts rolling out its ASIC based routers (layer 3 switches). As I am sure they will be very robust products from the moment they hit the market. Of course the vendors will be leap-frogging each other as usual. For example, Cabletrons SSR (Yago box) is capable of 15mpps Ethernet according to independant tests by Bradner. Meanwhile, Cisco's current capabilities for Ethernet are in the 5mpps range. In contrast, the Yago box is only capable of Ethernet, while Ciscos product integrates ATM and FDDI in addition to Ethernet. Both Cisco and Cabletron are limited to IP only on their high end layer 3 gigabit products. Its just a matter of time (Aug 98, and beyond) before Cisco releases its answer to the Yago box, so Cabletron has really got to 'get crackin'. Cabletron needs a really strong product to leverage its entrance into the routing arena. Spectrum? I have seen some very robust installations of Spectum including my own. And, it just continues to improve. If Spectrum becomes its own spin-off, you can count on it's success. The Spectrum product is a staff oriented network management tool. By staff oriented I mean that a network manager cannot expect his currently over-worked staff to get results from it. Spectrum requires at least 1 full-time person (more depending on the size of the network) to implement and maintain it. For this reason, some people have a bad impression of the product. But for serious networks, Spectrum is the way to go. Well, I hope this wasn't too confusing. Cheers!