re: Luminous Cuts AwayI think you're right: too many VPs especially in engineering.
I think Atrica is a losing proposition. Also, its latest round is a re-capitalization so don't be fooled by the numbers there. I don't know of any customers for Atrica and I'm told their SONET story is bogus (they don't support it). When you talk about hype, this company is all about hype. "All hat, no cattle" comes to mind.
I am not an insider at Luminous, nor am I an employee. I have a old friend on the Board of Directors. I know this much about Luminous: they are selling a lot more equipment than most of the startups out there. Again, watch for customer announcements in the coming weeks.
re: Luminous Cuts AwayWhat is the fate of other RPR companies like Force10 Networks and Lantern Communications? Rumor is that Lantern Communications also had a layoff sometime last year...Is RPR doomed in this depressed economy?
re: Luminous Cuts AwayRPR will do well in international markets where there's no SONET. Places like China, India, some parts of Europe. To do well in North America, Luminous has to get its SONET act together and fast. And it will. You can run RPR over SONET...
Force10 Networks is not an RPR company in any way.
Lantern Communications still has not delivered a working product to the market and are running out of money.
BTW, Cisco, Nortel and Alcatel have all formally announced programs for RPR based largely on the Luminous proposals. So, does that make them "RPR companies?"
I don't see a U.S customer for cisco either. the fact is that U.S carriers don't exactly trample each other in trying to deploy new technologies.. case in point DSL a while ago..
also I heard rumours that Cisco 10,000 port count includes the now defunct [email protected] network ports. what is the actual "active" DPT port count that cisco has right now ?
re: Luminous Cuts AwaySo to me, and no-one has given me a solid answer on this yet:
RPR (802.17) provides a survivable Ethernet ring infrastructure with monitoring and protection capabilities comparable to SONET while reducing costs.
Ok, this sounds great, but why then hasn't anyone just improved the clocking and signaling of FDDI to accomplish this?
I mean FDDI has DAS/SAS connections, dual homing, ring support etc. and seems to fit perfectly. There is already a wide array of Metro DWDM gear out there that supports FDDI, so why not just crack the 100M/sec (125Mb) barrier and up it to support 1.25Gb/sec connections with migration to 10G on either SONET or a 10G TBD style of FDDI.
And while we're at it, at the risk of sounding like a dinosaur here, why would anyone go RPR when FDDI is deterministic by nature being token based and much more in step with the predicatability of circuit management that carriers expect?
Don't get me wrong, I like Ethernet in a LAN environment and 10GE sounds great for point to point router meshing and the like but a survivable ring network and even ring switching was developed in FDDI long before to yield survivable data-centric rings and it's reliable. Ask any Bank or Air Traffic control network admin. So what gives, aside from making Ethernet behave like SONET because we like the word?
Much thanks and all insights, points of view would be great. - LC
re: Luminous Cuts AwayLitewave, I appreciate your comments but I think you missed a key part of what wilecoyote said.
"RPR will do well in international markets where there's no SONET. Places like China, India, some parts of Europe" The key phrase being "some parts of Europe"
"The incumbent operators in Europe and Asia are just as fastidious about SDH as the service providers in North America are about SONET."
There's a good portion of Europe (Eastern) that is mostly underdeveloped network wise. A good percentage of Asia and China presents a tremendous greenfield opportunity as well. It's interesting that Cisco/Nortel/Lucent and the rest are recently pounding their chests over deals they have won in Asia. There's not much to brag about in the US or western Europe these days.
I'd be interested to hear what kind of consulting you are involved in. You seem to have a very negative opinion of RPR, Luminous or both. Not to be cheeky, but your opinion sounds like conjecture. I do like your use of the word "fastidious". Not a word that you see used on bulletin boards very often.
BTW- The obilitory disclaimer: I'm also a consultant for emerging technologies. IMHO, I think RPR is going to be big.
They also won a couple of cable contracts.
Watch for some customer announcements to follow up this RIF announcement.