Stephen Lee

ISPs and equipment makers involved in optical networking should focus on their core competencies and set more realistic prices, abandoning the "build at any cost" mentality that prevailed during the glory years of the early 1990s.

When France-based networker Alcatel SA announced its plans Wednesday to sell most of its manufacturing facilities by the end of 2002, it was the latest hint of a growing trend among the vendor community: to streamline operations by outsourcing production.

Cisco Systems Inc. launched a set of training and deployment tools as an adjunct to its LRE (Long-Reach Ethernet) solution, which is designed to deliver high-speed broadband to multi-tenant buildings over existing copper lines.

Major Internet trunks were severed this month when ISP (Internet service provider) Cable & Wireless PLC pulled the plug on a peering arrangement with fellow service provider PSINet Inc., leaving many companies unable to send e-mail or see Web sites.

Nortel Networks Corp., one of the world's largest providers of enterprise telephony, has released two new VOIP (voice over IP) products at the NetWorld+Interop show in Las Vegas.

Companies often neglect the hardware that makes networking possible. That's largely because managing network hardware is such a hassle. "Maintaining the physical layer is typically the domain of 'cable jockeys'

Faced with a plummeting stock market and depleted sales, networking giants Cisco Systems Inc., Lucent Technologies Inc. and Nortel Networks Corp. are refocusing their optical strategies, either by offering products aimed at specific segments of the market or spinning off optical units altogether.

Cisco Systems Inc. has rolled out a line of DWDM (dense wavelength division multiplexing) hardware, touting them as the first solutions capable of providing DWDM services to metropolitan areas.