Juniper Networks Inc. earlier this month announced a new deployment of its routers in the Internet2 research network at the same time an investment research firm cut its estimates for the company based on edge router trials underway at Verizon Communications Inc.
Buckingham Research Group cut its fiscal year 2002-2003 estimates for Juniper due to recent channel checks that indicate the company is unlikely to win sales from the trials of its Unisphere edge routers at Verizon. Buckingham stated that Juniper valued the potential sale of the routers to Verizon at under US$5 million, according to a bulletin on the Yahoo Finance site.
Verizon is trialing Juniper’s edge routers as part of an edge buildout valued between US$200 million and US$300 million, according to analysts, vendors and published reports. Redback Networks Inc., the incumbent vendor, and Riverstone Networks Inc. are also believed to be trialing products for that buildout.
Verizon has declined to comment on the trials in previous queries.
In the bulletin, Buckingham stated that the Juniper routers displayed “compatibility issues” during the trials. Calls to Buckingham for elaboration were not returned by press time.
As a result, Buckingham cut its fiscal year 2002 revenue and earnings per share forecasts for Juniper to US$534 million and -US$0.04 from $543 million and -US$0.03. Fiscal year 2003 estimates were shaved to US$530 million and -US$0.08 from US$568 million and -US$0.04, both below consensus.
A Juniper spokeswoman said the company does not comment on analyst estimates or on “rumours.”
Meanwhile, Juniper said additional M-series and T-series routers have been deployed in four Internet2 GigaPoPs, or gigabit points-of-presence. Internet2, which includes more than 200 U.S.-based universities working with industry and government, is developing applications and technologies for accelerating the creation of the next-generation Internet.
Juniper’s routers have been installed in the Front Range GigaPoP in Colorado, the New York State Education Research Network (NYSERNet), the Pacific Northwest GigaPop and the Texas GigaPoP. These GigaPoPs serve the university and research members in their respective regions and support HDTV over IP, data mining, 3D visualization and telemicroscopy applications.
Internet2’s Abilene, Tex. backbone network connects the GigaPoP regional network aggregation points. The Abilene network is currently being upgraded to OC-192 with Juniper’s T-series routers.
