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Technology Stocks : COMS & the Ghost of USRX w/ other STUFF -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: David Lawrence who wrote (14978)	4/23/1998 12:34:00 PM
From: Scrapps	Respond to of 22053

Your 15 minutes are up my man! <ggg> That front page was used by the kitchen staff to throw out the fish guts.

To: David Lawrence who wrote (14978)	4/23/1998 12:55:00 PM
From: Moonray	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 22053

David, since you are a good Samaritan and all (even to the point of having a pole totaling your car), I thought maybe you could help these good people out:<g> Here's an interesting teleportation factoid I found in comp.sys.palmtops.pilot (paraphrased slightly for clarity): Using today's fastest fiber optic cabling, it would take 96 million years to move a human body one foot. Does anyone know the source of this factoid? o~~~ O

To: David Lawrence who wrote (14978)	4/23/1998 1:14:00 PM
From: Moonray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22053

Cisco's Accord With Ciena Pits It Against Lucent, Other Rivals San Jose, California, April 23 (Bloomberg) -- Cisco Systems Inc.'s decision to make its equipment compatible with Ciena Corp. products is just the start of Cisco's push into markets also targeted by Lucent Technologies Inc. and other rivals. Cisco said this week it will begin shipping a product that will link its most powerful routers directly to Ciena's dense wavelength division multiplexers, or WDMs. Phone companies and Internet service providers use WDMs, which split beams of light carried on fiber-optic cable, to expand network capacity without buying new fiber. The No. 1 maker of computer-networking equipment is looking to the telecommunications-carrier market to maintain revenue growth as sales to its traditional corporate customers slow. That will pit Cisco against big telecom-equipment makers like Lucent and Northern Telecom Ltd., who also want a piece of the growing market for gear sold to phone companies and Internet services. ''They are now viewing Lucent and Nortel as competitors,'' said Lee Doyle, an analyst at International Data Corp. in Framingham, Massachusetts. Speeding Traffic San Jose, California-based Cisco sells its largest routers to phone companies and Internet service providers, which use them to route data between different parts of their networks. To speed the flow of Internet-based data traffic, Cisco wants to link the routers directly to WDM equipment and bypass other parts of the network used primarily for voice calls. ''We're trying to remove layers from carrier networks,'' said Graeme Fraser, vice president of Cisco's Internet service provider business unit. Cisco's partnership with Ciena is a clear move against Lucent, Ciena's chief rival in the WDM equipment market. Since WDM technology isn't yet standardized, telecom service providers can't use competing products in the same part of their network. That will force phone companies and Internet service providers to choose either Lucent or the Cisco-Ciena partnership to handle growing Internet traffic with WDM gear. Part of Cisco's strategy is to target the market for products that link optical-based voice networks to corporate computer-data networks and the Internet, Fraser said. Its agreement with Linthicum, Maryland-based Ciena calls for the two companies to develop products designed for networks that carry primarily data traffic. Those products are likely to be more attractive to newer telecom service providers such as Qwest Communications International Inc., which carries more data than voice traffic, than they are to traditional long-distance phone companies like MCI Communications Corp. and Sprint Corp., Doyle said. While the amount of voice traffic has been relatively unchanged this decade, data traffic has more than doubled every year and both types of traffic frequently are carried on the same network. Different Levels As Internet-based data traffic grows, telecom service providers want equipment that lets them offer different levels of Internet access. That will let them charge more to business customers and squeeze more profit out of their Internet service. The market for data-networking equipment sold to telecom carriers is expected to increase to $18 billion in 2001 from $5 billion in 1997, Doyle said. That doesn't include sales of WDM gear and other optical-based telecommunications equipment made by Lucent, Northern Telecom, Ciena and others. ''This is where the networking (revenue) growth is going to come from'' in the next few years, said Craig Johnson, an analyst at PITA Group in Portland, Oregon. The Ciena partnership isn't Cisco's first move into optical- based networking. The company in July bought Canada-based Skystone Systems Corp., whose technology moves Internet-based traffic over optical networks. Cisco is developing other in-house optical networking products and hasn't ruled out acquiring other small companies as it prepares to battle Lucent, Fraser said. ''It doesn't make sense for us to do everything home- grown,'' he said. Cisco has investments in several small optical- networking companies, which Fraser declined to name. If djane wants to swipe this story (or any other) for the ASND thread, permission granted!<g> o~~~ O