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

To: Jack Colton who wrote (13463)	5/16/1999 9:35:00 PM
From: Sector Investor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42804

This was a busy and eventful weekend. I see Frank already posted an excellent discussion on building topology and barriers to optical concepts. I am already behind on my discussion promise - and I still have bills to pay yet tonight. Let me show the thread what I have in mind by posting my PMs to Frank. PM #1 *********************************************** Frank, I have a proposition for you. (It needs a bit of background first) Next month MRVC's Charlotte's Web equity investment debuts their ARANEA1 router at SuperComm in Atlanta. I think the specs and architecture on this are dynamite and will be a hit in the market place. The product scales from 1/8 terabit to 4 terabits, with high port density and full redundancy, It uses DWDM to connect the boxes so they can be some distance apart, yet can be managed as one virtual box0. "Pipes" can aggregate up to OC-768 or down to OC-3. It handles any combination of POS, ATM and GE ports. There are several other vendors in the Terabit market place as well. As you also know (but I am not strong on) the TOPOLOGY of the next generation Internet will change to an architecture that will be able to scale easier and less costly. Optical Networking concepts will start to be deployed. This of course affects ROUTERS - not only new next generation boxes, but the current installed base as well, which should start moving to mid-core or edge functions (or be displaced completely) by this new technology. I saw an article today where a comment was made that the market for terabit routers may only be 1000 boxes total, and some vendors of this new equipment failing due to not enough market out there (which I want to dispute) This whole topic area is probably worthy of it's own general thread on SI, but first I want to discuss it concerning MRVC/ARANEA specific impacts. Their are several excellent White Papers on the Pluris web site, as well as PDF documents on the Charlotte's Web website. I want to post excerpts on the MRVC thread and start a discussion on impacts. I need someone stronger in this area than I to provide some analysis. This requires reading these White Papers and joining me in a discussion on the MRVC thread. Are you game?

To: Jack Colton who wrote (13463)	5/16/1999 9:39:00 PM
From: Sector Investor	Respond to of 42804

PM #2 *********************************** I'll try, but today is a big honey-do day. Clean out the garage, wash windows, pay bills, clean the office, take an old printer to Goodwill, etc, etc, etc. What I had in mind was this - and it can evolve slowly in the evenings and weekends: 1) Discuss the "problems" with current Internet topology from the perspectives of growth/expandability, management and cost - some of the Pluris white papers, specifically #1, #2 and #5 do this nicely. I plan to use excerpts from these papers to kick off discussion of specific topics to build thread understanding. pluris.com 2) Try to answer a few tough questions: How is the next generation Internet likely to be designed? When will it begin to be deployed? Will optical networking come into play or is it too early yet? What will happen to the current Internet cores? Will it evolve and expand, or will new next generation cores be built along side the old? How soon will IP replace POS and/or ATM, if it does? What does this mean for the current installed base of Routers and switches? Will they migrate outward to lesser functions or will they be obsoleted and replaced by newer technology? What types of next generation products are morely likely to be winners than others? What are the attributes that might be most attractive to Core Carriers? CLECs? ISPs? 3) In the light of 1) and 2), discuss the prospects of MRVC's ARANEA1 from an architecture and design perspective. Does it look good, or are there major flaws we can see? How does it compare to other Terabit Router vendors' products and architectures? Check out: cwnt.com then look at the Executive Summary under "COMPANY" and The ARANEA-1 datasheet under "PRODUCTS" 4) Ultimately, if there is no SI thread for general discussion of this area, let's create one (How do we do that? I don't know how) My aim is to learn some key insights into this area, and also of course to evaluate MRVC's prospects with ARANEA and MetroFusion too

To: Jack Colton who wrote (13463)	5/16/1999 9:43:00 PM
From: Sector Investor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42804

PM #3 ************************************************* I just checked MY calendar for today Work called at 1:00 AM on a production problem, so I will spend 3-4 hours fixing that (nice to bill by the hour!) At 1:00 PM my daughter is doing an improv show at Second City - a must attend event, followed by an all afternoon barbecue. Then bill paying that I put off all weekend. I will put together a series of unposted posts in MS-Word format that set the stage for some discussion, by tomorrow evening. I will send these to you (Word-97 OK?) BEFORE I post anything. What I am hoping to do beside learning, is to grow the understanding of this area by people interested in MRVC, and to increase their/our confidence that they have a significant winner in ARANEA (if in fact it is). Although this stock has just doubled, it can easily triple or more from here in the next 18-24 months if ARANEA and MetroFusion are winners, because earnings from carrier products have not started flowing yet and the stock price will reflect that when it does. I'm also looking for the market to give MRVC a more normal P/E and P/S ratio compared with other networkers over time. ************************************************** And now to the dreaded bill paying :-(