6:00 PM -- Still in New York, at the Light ReadingEthernet Expo. Day 2 is still busy. Some quick-hit notes:
Ethernet is still hard to get, even if you're AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T). In a very well received keynote this morning, Richard Klapman, the carrier's product director for U.S. Ethernet services, noted that his group has 15 relationships with other Ethernet carriers, deals where AT&T can traverse another's network to complete Ethernet connections. That's compared with 400 suppliers he's got on the TDM side, which has admittedly been around longer. One problem: Ethernet pricing takes a long time to get from some carriers, and the price AT&T has to pay is still "too high" compared with what AT&T's end customers are demanding.
Provider Backbone Transport (PBT), the carrier Ethernet variant championed by Nortel Networks Ltd. , is getting picked at by competitors. Juniper Networks Inc. (NYSE: JNPR) director of product line management Jim Capobianco gave a presentation advocating a Layer 3 control plane (IP/MPLS) for carrier Ethernet, rather than a modified Layer 2 option (like PBT), which, he asserted, might not scale. There's some talk that PBT, with a GMPLS control plane, might work as an option. Haven't gotten a chance to talk with Nortel's John Hawkins about that. (See BT Rethinks 21CN Core Strategy and Nortel's PBT Debuts in China.)
Every type of DSL seems to have a supporter when it comes to Ethernet-over-copper. (Well, not ADSL -- carriers don't want asymmetric transport.) On one panel, Hatteras Networks Inc. -- which claims its gear is agnostic to Layer 1 and doesn't have a horse in this race -- noted G.shdsl was already picked for copper transport in IEEE 802.3ah. Aktino Inc. notes that DMT has won similar RBOC battles before (VDSL2 is DMT-based). And Overture Networks Inc. , apparently wanting to cause trouble, voted for HDSL, saying it's already got a huge telco following. Gee, that cleared things up.
Is every Manhattan Starbucks this slow? There are two of them here -- one in the Hilton that's housing the Expo, one across the street. Both are a constant clot of traffic. Maybe it's just the volume of caffeine fiends in New York...
Already replaced as CEO, John Chambers is fully detaching as he plans to step down as Cisco chairman, truly ending his time as the face and voice of the company.