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

To: signist who wrote (13504)	5/17/1999 10:02:00 PM
From: Sector Investor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42804

OK. Here we go. Lets learn something and have some fun too. Let's open this to all the MRVC threads. Anyone can ask a question and anyone can post an answer on their respective threads. I will scan the threads for related posts and repost them on SI. At the end, I will create a consolidated post of links to all the posts, so they can be bookmarked. Remember the intent here is to discuss this topic first GENERALLY, then later get into specific product discussions later. Most of this information is from the Pluris Whitepapers - that doesn't make it true, so it should be challenged a bit. I will break up the topics into multiple, easy to read posts. First some background from Whitepaper #1 Escalating Demands on Backbone Networks During the past two decades, the basic communications infrastructure throughout the world has experienced both unprecedented growth and sweeping change. This has engendered a dramatic shift in the roles of many traditional communications service providers as well as the rise of a whole new category of service. Over the past 20 years, overall Internet traffic has steadily increased at an average monthly rate of 10%, and is currently projected to double every three to six months. Much of this Internet data explosion is now being fueled by the combined impetus of millions of new users, far richer content (e.g. multimedia), and the migration of corporate traffic onto the Internet. In addition to the Internet, other data traffic is also predicted to increase rapidly over the next few years, while traditional voice-only traffic is predicted to grow at a much more modest rate. The growth of Internet data traffic is expected to actually surpass the level of traffic on the existing Public Switched Telephone network in the year 2001, at a daily level of well over 12 terabits. If, as projected, this growth continues unabated, the daily levels of overall Internet traffic will reach 1000 terabits- per-day by the end of 2005, representing more than 100 times the comparable daily traffic on the telephone network. This fundamental shift toward data traffic, combined with the overwhelming rise in Internet IP-based communications, has led many traditional "telephone" companies to embrace the new opportunities and to re-invent themselves as IP-oriented datacom service companies. In addition, the Internet's popularity among both consumers and businesses has led to the evolution of a multi-tiered network of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) ranging from Tier 3 retail providers up through Tier 2 regional ISPs and Tier 1 ISPs, who provide high-bandwidth backbone connections.

To: signist who wrote (13504)	5/17/1999 10:10:00 PM
From: Sector Investor	Respond to of 42804

THE NEXT GENERATION INTERNET INFRASTRUCTURE It is apparent that the load on the Internet is growing with no signs of slowing down. It is even more apparent that existing network architectures, system designs, and software protocols have failed to provide an adequate solution to problems the growing load is creating. Calling the World Wide Web, the World Wide Wait, is not so funny when the Internet has become a major money maker for the smallest home office all the way up to the biggest multinational corporation. It is frightening to realize that the new-generation backbones, such as Internet2, Star-Tap, and many other major exchanges, are being built and interconnected using systems that will probably become bottlenecks to vital information within 12 months From the Corporate to the Core The Internet has simply grown too big, too fast. Equipment that was originally designed for corporate networks has found its way into backbone networks only because ISPs had no other choice. Service providers that are struggling to maintain and grow their customer base do not have the luxury of waiting for the perfect product. On the other hand, trying to get higher-performance products from your leading vendor can become an exercise in threats and arm twisting, often to no avail. The products that are needed are just not available. When it comes to the very high-end products, those needed at the core of the Internet and at the exchange points where hundreds of providers plug in to exchange traffic, the situation becomes more complicated. Using enterprise routers to handle Internet backbone traffic just doesn't work. The core of the Internet is entirely different from enterprise networks in that the least amount of instability can disrupt thousands and millions of critical real time applications and cause overall performance degradation across the whole Internet. The latest products on the market today have attempted to address the problem but while they are one step up from enterprise routers, they are also miles away from achieving the performance levels required from a coming generation of Internet backbone routers. What is really needed is a totally new approach - Internet backbone routers that are designed from the ground up to deal with the scaleability, reliability, high availability and manageability required at the core of the Internet.

To: signist who wrote (13504)	5/17/1999 10:15:00 PM
From: Sector Investor	Respond to of 42804

Example of Today's Non-Scalable POP Designs Today's Network Model Today's installed network core architecture is based on the concept of interconnecting large numbers of individually non-scaleable routers and ATM switches to gain incremental throughput. Each POP is a collection of routers connected around ATM switches which are used as a fast Layer 2 switching fabric between the Layer 3 devices. The IntraPOP (within a POP) connections are achieved by connecting the line card ports of the routers and/or ATM switches to allow traffic to transit from any ingress port to any egress port in the POP. There are three major problems inherent in this model. The Switching Bottleneck, The Port Density Drop-off and Operational Overhead .

To: signist who wrote (13504)	5/17/1999 10:19:00 PM
From: Sector Investor	Respond to of 42804

The Switching Bottleneck The first problem with the current network core architecture is the difficulty of increasing the overall POP switching capacity to meet the exponential growth in Internet traffic. The interconnect between the routers and/or ATM switches at the POP is done via OC-12 (622 Mbps) or OC-48 (2.4 Gbps) Line cards. This dictates that the transit throughput in the POP can be no greater than the interconnect speeds. Increasing the interconnect speed to meet the transit throughput (measured in hundreds of Gbps) requires a tremendous increase in the number of interconnect links (using additional line cards) which increases both operational and capital costs. This is why today's architecture ends up sacrificing transit throughput. Even small increases in transit throughput add enormously to the cost and complexity of the network. In addition, Layer 3 packet flows traversing a complex web of routers and switches connected via multiple physical links results in degraded QoS in terms of end-to-end delay and jitter. This degradation results from delays in L3 lookup, queuing, and possible Layer 2 conversion (e.g. converting packets to cells and vice versa). All of the above factors translate into continuous degradation of service quality which negatively impacts network scaleability and hence end user satisfaction

To: signist who wrote (13504)	5/17/1999 10:23:00 PM
From: Sector Investor	Respond to of 42804

The Port Density Drop-Off The second problem with the current architectures has to do with port density. Using line card ports to interconnect routers and switches to provide intra-POP switching decreases the number of usable ports needed for inter-POP (between POPs) connectivity and end-user connectivity. Due to the advancements in Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM), a single fiber can carry any-where from 40 to 80 channels at 2.4 Gbps and 10 Gbps speeds. In order to terminate DWDM channels with IP, backbone routers need to be able to switch hundreds of OC-48 and OC-192 ports. This means that the larger the network grows, the larger the IntraPOP connectivity grows and the more routers are needed to meet the backbone and end user connectivity. The number of ports needed for IntraPOP connectivity is about 50% or higher of the number of ports needed for backbone and end user connectivity.

To: signist who wrote (13504)	5/17/1999 10:26:00 PM
From: Sector Investor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42804

Operational Overhead Switching and port density requirements needed to meet the exponential data growth are forcing service providers to knit together a number of disparate routers and switches, each of which must be separately managed and maintained. This quickly translates into a network management and operational nightmare. Operational components include technology evaluation, testing, installation, maintenance and administration. Given the lack of any built-in scaleability in today's architectures, service providers have to spend a substantial percentage of revenues to upgrade the backbone infrastructure every 12 to 15 months. Today's complex core network infrastructure has a number of sophisticated cell and packet technologies such as ATM and IP. A service provider needs domain experts for each of the technology areas to face the day-to-day operational challenge. Increasing the number of disparate non-scaleable network entities demands more expert man/hours, which translates to an ever-increasing network management budget. The number of expert man/hours needed to keep up with the separately operated network nodes and their regular maintenance and upgrade schedules will increase at a faster pace than the capacity of the network. Since operational costs can run as high as 80% of total expenses, this has become the most important concern of the service providers.

To: signist who wrote (13504)	5/17/1999 10:34:00 PM
From: Sector Investor	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42804

The Inherent Limitations of Either "More Boxes" or "Bigger Boxes" The creation of new scaleable TeraPOP architectures to handle tomorrow's traffic levels will require a dramatic departure from yesterday's technological approaches, which generally have consisted of either adding more boxes or trying to build bigger single-backplane boxes. As has been demonstrated above, the traditional approach of simply adding more limited-scale conventional routers carries with it an exponential increase in overall network complexity and Layer 3 software overhead that eventually bogs the network down in its control logic. To reach the required capacity at major Internet concentration points, such as SuperPOPs and IXPs, carriers have had to build complex networks within networks, while experiencing ever-diminishing efficiency from each incremental addition. On the other hand, the maximum speed of conventional routing systems is inherently limited by the speed of the semiconductor technologies used to implement them and the aggregate bandwidth of their internal backplane architectures. From a semiconductor standpoint, even the continued march toward finer process geometries and the advent of high speed processes, such as Gallium-Arsenide (GaAs) and Silicon-Germanium (SiGe) are only keeping chip-level speeds up to the growth pace predicted by Moore's Law. Even if semiconductors do continue doubling in speed every 18 months, that simply means that chip-level performance is falling further behind every day as the Internet continues to grow at a sustained rate 3 to 6 times greater than the increases in semiconductor speeds. Backplane bandwidth constraints have traditionally posed the major barrier to simply creating faster versions of conventional router architectures. Initial router designs were based on single bus architectures, which provided the most straightforward and robust implementations for limited scale systems. Although the evolution of dual-bus and crossbar structures has done much to improve backplane throughput, the critical issue is now shifting away from the raw backplane speed of such single-box systems and toward the need for scaling up to handle many more ports than any single box can support. The challenge of effectively terminating thousands of WDM channels from hundreds of OC-48 and OC- 192 connections goes well beyond the capacity of any single monolithic system. For instance, as the 200,000+ voice lines between core Central Office installations transition instead toward thousands of DSL lines, high-speed cable modems and wireless connections, the new infrastructure will require hundreds of OC-48 and OC-192 optical ports to carry the traffic over WDM channels. No matter how big or fast the backplane, a finitely-defined, single-box system will always be fundamentally constrained by the amount of physical real estate in the box for providing port connections. This port-density limitation cannot be overcome simply by attempting to aggregate together a number of such monolithic individual systems because the sheer complexity of load-sharing port traffic between the separate boxes quickly becomes prohibitive. The emphasis for next-generation systems will have to be on creating inherent capacity to cost-effectively terminate the maximum number of ports within each box and then to gracefully and economically be able to expand the overall system to encompass additional capacity. In essence, the basic architecture for tomorrow's backbone-class, terabit-level devices will need to transition from the concept of a "single box" to that of a "single system" in which all system components can be mutually optimized and smoothly scaled.