Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MikeM54321 who wrote (2233)	10/23/1998 3:15:00 PM
From: DenverTechie	Respond to of 12823

Mr. Gilder is basically trying to predict a paradigm shift in networking. He is saying that WDM will be the catalyst that transforms networks away from TDM and will have a similar effect on communications that client/server computing architecture had on the mainframe and minicomputer computing architectures of the mid 1980s. He's saying that existing network infrastructures like SONET will proliferate for a while (interval undisclosed by him here) and then it will all come crashing down as WDM takes over as optical layer protection, etc. etc. becomes available in the again, undisclosed time frame future. Question is, is this vision of the future correct? What's his time frame? Are we talking "not too distant future", 20 years, what? I don't agree this is imminent, if that is the suggestion. You will still need digital equipment and grooming vehicles as long as there is CPE out there using analog or digital signals. What, after all, is riding on all this light and fiber we're talking about? It's digital signals that at some point or another must be converted out of the optical domain into the electrical domain to be useable. Maybe 20 to 25 years from now end products will be able to use optical signals directly (an optical computer?) but for the realistically foreseeable future I don't see it. Funny thing about paradigm shifts -- they are almost impossible to predict, but self evident AFTER they have occurred.