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To: The Phoenix who wrote (60405)	3/24/1999 9:01:00 PM
From: Techplayer	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 61433

Gary, At the time that CSCO spent 4 billion or so on Stratacom, Strat was the leader in ATM. CSCC captured that space from them. (It could be due to this deal that Chambers feels so negatively about large mergers.) Regarding spending that much money to slow down ATM acceptance, I doubt it. At the time, they felt that Stratacom's product was to be their CSCC killer. CSCO had the clout and supposed technology leader in ATM technology. Remember also that CSCO had just spent 100 million on Lightstream, another ATM vendor/start-up just before this. The strat purchase killed the lightstream development. I am also not sure that ATM did not gain in popularity because of this purchase due to Cisco's financial endorsement of the technology. At the time of the purchase, I was momentarily concerned as a CSCC holder. Just an opinion. Regards, brian

To: The Phoenix who wrote (60405)	3/24/1999 9:07:00 PM
From: polarisnh	Respond to of 61433

OG, I agree with you that things might be quite different if Cisco had acquired Cascade and Lucent had therefore acquired Stratacom. I have been involved in this industry for quite some time and I remember the rumblings when Cisco was courting Cascade. Cisco didn't feel that Cascade was worth the kind of premium that they were looking for. Initially Stratacom had an edge in this market, but Cascade had made a lot of inroads into the Frame Relay market by the time Cisco was looking to pick up a company in this area. In hindsight (Which is something that I think we all wish we could use in our stock picking!) I bet Chambers wishes he had gone after Cascade instead of Stratacom. Cheers, Steve