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Technology Stocks : Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: djane who wrote (15083)	7/15/1998 7:59:00 PM
From: mauser96	Respond to of 77400

Great article. Now if we can only figure out who Cisco needs to merge with, other than ASND. Would the antitrust people allow an ASND CSCO merger? Would Alcatel Alsthom be a possibility? An ALA CSCO merger would be a powerhouse.

To: djane who wrote (15083)	7/16/1998 12:34:00 PM
From: Scott Rafe	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 77400

RE: reliability of circuit switched and having to join an Old World company... Yuck! Circuit switched reliability? I have heard this sorry bone dragged up several times now. What do we consider reliability? That we get dial tone? One could generate that in the handset-what does it get you? How about that your call actually goes through? Anyone here live in a major metro area or have to call into one? More than a couple times a day we all get, "All circuits are busy. Please try your call again later." And it is getting worse. So much for "Reliability". Capacity: There are finite ports on a 5E class switch, and they are _very_ expensive. There are limited circuit sw calls that can be muxed into each. You don't just whack a fatter pipe onto one of these and get more capacity. Which is what you can pretty much do in a packet switched (voice over packet or even cell) network. The PSTN was designed for a "hold time" (length of call) of about 3 minutes. As data started using the voice network the hold times grew longer and longer. The Telcos could not afford to nor even physically add enough ports and bandwidth fast enough. They still can't. It breaks their business model. Only because of government regulation do they have to do it at all. They _could_ say, "A 'No Circuit Available' every 10th call is acceptable." Funny. That's what we are getting now. Though I cannot imagine that is by choice. Mine or the Telcos. At what price reliability?: SS7 routing (call routing)within the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network)is complex and requires hard-wired full-mesh to the control points in order to assure redundancy and reliability. Packet is cheaper and easier to design and maintain and has inherently more effective routing of voice/data. By nature the concept of packet sw is more scaleable. In case anyone doesn't know; there are two entire separate networks that make up the PSTN. The signalling network between Central Office switches, and a different network -the circuits on which your traffic rides. More pieces = lower MTBF unless you get crazy with the overdesign of those pieces, run multiple instances of that piece, and the interconnection duplication between them is extreme. Which equals ... EXPENSIVE. Telco's cannot continue to pay Lucent or Nortel a couple million bucks a pop for CO switches and THEN pay hundreds of kilobucks per year on maintenance. The evolving price structure won't support it. Price per minute will fall to ZERO for voice. It will hitch a ride with the data traffic for free. FYI: the amount of data traffic passed the amount of voice this year. Simple solution: Turn voice into data... IP. And ship it on the best data networks available. Regarding judging future performance based on past history: Most current packet networks in were never designed as multi-service (voice/data/video)networks. When they were installed the idea of a multi-service network was just a far off dream. Large scale redesign is going on now to build multi-service networks out of the existing structure, enabling quality of service and five 9's reliability. The networks that are using Cisco IOS find that most of the time that redesign just requires thought and a software upgrade. But the _leading_ business are using their networks to MAKE money with new ideas and are buying up multiservice capable Cisco hardware at a fantastic rate. How it is going to play out: The most reliable, scaleable and importantly, manageable networks in the packet/cell switched world are built on Cisco equipment. Companies from CitiCorp to Sprint have staked their future on that premise. Telcos must move to Voice over IP if they are to survive. (That is not just my interpretation but that of those in the industry.) Businesses (and consumers) are moving already to packet voice because of the cost savings and new applications. In IP and data internetworking, Cisco is the only game in town. Voice is just another type of data. Cisco products range from some serious central telephone office capable switches (multiple tens of thousands of calls), down to VoIP enabled home devices. As well as the critical management, control and accounting (billing)elements needed to make a functional voice network. Voice is data. It is simply time for network design to catch up with how central and critical data networks have become in our lives. It is happening now.