Ascend Archive
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Re: (ASCEND) The MAX TNT (fwd)
Once upon a time Brian Chiko shaped the electrons to say...
>I think you're overly optimistic about Livingston's future (and how quickly
>Lucent can do anything) and making the mistake of taking a classic
Lucent doesn't matter - the PM-4 is about ready. It doesn't have anything
to do with Lucent. Of course, it has a LOT of growth potential built
in.
Except that Lucent used to resell Ascend gear in their big contracts -
and they switched to Livingston HW. That's networking for RBOCs and
telcos world wide...
>engineering approach to problem that is much more complex. Companies don't
>abandon a company/product line just because it may get behind on a single
>feature - e.g. density. The fact is market momentum, a proven code base,
Density, performance, features, etc. I know a bit of what is happening
with the TNT, as well as some of the things coming from 3Com, Bay, etc.
And, of course, Livingston. If the TNT isn't overhauled soon it will be
trailing in all important areas. ATM, Frame Relay, HSSI, FDDI, etc are
all available now on other chassis, or available very soon. Proven OSPF
and BGP support is already present on most of the products.
About all it will have is the commonality issue.
Soon you'll find NAT, Proxy-NAT, ethernet multihoming, OSPF on demand lines,
DNIS authentication, etc on other products - those that don't have them
already. Cisco just came out with NFAS, Livingston will soon.
In both interface types and base protocols there is growing competition.
And, frankly, other vendors tend to get new things working the first time,
or very shortly thereafter, and don't have a dozen patch releases to
work it out. That makes a big difference to many people.
>products and they probably don't want to spend a whole lot of time learning
>another access router's issues (let alone one from a company that has only
>recently started developing their own router code). I would bet that these
I hope you're not referring to Livingston, since Livingston has been
developing its own router code since *day one*. We've never purchased
another company to get access to their code or HW. We also produced OSPF
code that worked well from day one, and has only had a couple of minor
bugs. Same with BGP code. Very, very few vendors can claim that.
>companies aren't going to change their purchase patterns over any short
>period of time. To move from an environment where you are supporting one
You might be surprised who has come looking... ;-) There are those who
are looking to switch, if there is something good to switch to.
>Additionally, The TNT has a broad array of expansion cards - IDSL, SDSL,
>RADSL, HSSI, Frameline, 100Mb Ethernet, T1, T3, ... with a boatload of code
>and proven software features that have and been wrung out over a number of
100Mb ethernet, T1, T3, and frameline are cake. If any company can't do
them today, they should dry up and blow away.
xDSL takes more to implement, but I wouldn't be quite as complacent as
you are. Trust me....
Then you have ATM, SONET, etc...
>years use in virtually all the major ISPs around the world. Bay and
Livingston isn't exactly new to the ISP market, nor are we limited to small
users only. So many people make the mistake of thinking so.
>Livingston will take years to catch up to the TNT in terms of functionality
>and robustness (IMHO). Add to this that fact that Bay, ACC and Livingston
I laugh at this myself. Robustness? How long has the OSPF code been
flaky? How many security holes have been caught in the past year?
Every vendor has bugs - everyone. The only major bugs we've had in recent
times are connected with 56K modems. And the last of those is about fixed.
It has been a long time since there have been any major issues in the
core code - routing, auth, interfaces, etc.
I've had some long talks with TNT users. They certainly weren't very
impressed with the 'robustness' to date. Or the functionality really.
>have very limited experience in these large networks that Ascend has many
>years experience in, and you really have to wonder who in their right mind
Livingston has experience in large networks - hundreds of chassis and
tens of thousands of ports - too. And you know Lucent does, right?
>Add to this that fact that Ascend has great management software solutions
>now, powerful security solutions, and an R&D budget that probably dwarfs
>the entire revenue of ACC and Livingston in the ISP market and I think that
>we can count on these also rans to go the way of Gandalf. How many
Did you miss the fact that Livingston is now part of Lucent? Want to
talk R&D budgets now? ;-) Come to Internet World in NY in December, I
believe we'll have Amber and Betty on display - that's the new PMconsole that
manages multiple chassis (amongst other things), and the new commercial
RADIUS server/billing system/report generator. Both are Java.
And I believe the PM-4 debut will be there. :-)
-MZ
--
Livingston Enterprises - Chair, Department of Interstitial Affairs
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