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Technology Stocks : MRV Communications (MRVC) opinions? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kristen who wrote (9782)	8/1/1998 11:10:00 AM
From: Sector Investor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42804

An excellent post from Yahoo regarding terabit routers. MRVC announced a project in development in the Conference call. Terrabit Routers... SidneyKarton (25/M/Jersey) Jul 31 1998 9:04PM EDT I guess as you know, there are no terrabit routers existing right now. All the talk is about future plans and products in development. So, talking about the fastest routers out there (forget terrabit for a sec), we have -- CSCO: The 12000 handles 622Mbps, with I think a maximum port density of 16 per box. This is way way below terrabit and also below Lucent's Packetstar. In addition, the 12000 has problems even in maintaining the 622 Mbps on each interface. Cisco has a true wirespeed multi-Gigabit router in the works. Of course, because of brand recognition, Cisco will still sell whatever they make. I would say, Terrabit for them is atleast a 2 years away. To compete with the brand name of Cisco, you have to not only make better products, faster to the market, but also convince the carriers to choose something that they are not confident about. Thats the key. -- Ascend: Apparently, Ascend's GRF has similar capacities as Cisco 12000 and maybe even more robust, however, its not selling because of the simple reason that they didnt do a good job selling it. Technologically speaking, I would put them above Cisco -- Lucent: The PacketStar series offers upto 128 Gigabits per second with OC-48 interfaces (2.5G), and apparently is true wirespeed as all the packet lookup functions are designed for worst case behavior. It also has more levels of service than the 12000. They have a Terrabit plan within a year or so. Their big problem would be to convince carriers that are legit in the data business. -- Bay and 3Com: Nothing exciting to talk about in this space. Lots of start-ups are building high speed routers. None terrabit in the near future (say 1 year or so), but very close. They include Juniper, Avici, Torrent, Nexabit, Ipsilon etc. So, the key for MRV is to finish this project FAST! They better have a box with 12-15 months. Else, they will have the problem that Ascend has in replacing Cisco's dominance... Another trend to follow might be the fact that companies like Cisco and Ascend are pushing for MPLS ie. routers at the periphery and ATM in the backbone. So, MRV also has to come up with the Terrabit box before MPLS becomes a reality, else they will have to compete with carrier ATM switches as well-- and that will be even more difficult. In summary, this is a very very hot field and lots of companies have invested heavily in it, small and big. So, the crucial thing is who is the first to market... Nevertheless, its good that MRV is atleast trying to attack that market... Hope that helps.. Later PS. tera = earth ?? No!! Terra = 10 to the power 12 or a million million