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November 1999


Less Wires, Please
I recently installed an SDSL line into my residence. Unfortunately, since my SDSL is a baseband signal, we had to unplug my analog phone in order to turn it on. I would rather not pay to have another set of wires run into my apartment. Do you know if a device/service exists that would allow me to use a telephone over my DSL line (IP network)? I am looking for something which could place and receive calls to/from standard POTS — essentially to completely replace a home phone. Thanks for any info you may have.
— Gary Farrington

TMC™ Group Publisher Rich Tehrani responds:
One way is to get a PC equipped with an inexpensive Quicknet or ACS Innovations Internet telephony card, and connect a phone to the card. Using Net2Phone or other service providers will do the trick. Cisco/Selsius has a phone that will plug into an Ethernet port (sans PC) but you will need a service provider that supports it.

CTI magazine associate editor Chris Donner:
I think this is pretty easily answered by a CPE device, such as FlowPoint’s 2200V, which provides four analog ports for fax/phone/modem connection as well as data access via SDSL, an internal LAN, and support for a firewall, etc. For more information, visit FlowPoint’s Web site.


Robert Hashemian’s September 1999 Reality Check column (Those Crazy Routers And Switches. Their Prices Are Insane!) sparked a great number of comments from our readers. We have included some of the comments below.

To the Editors,
I strenuously disagree with the conclusions you draw in your September 1999 column, “Those Crazy Routers And Switches. Their Prices Are Insane.”

You state, “that there is a conspiracy going on in the world of routers and switches, and the goal is to squeeze every cent out of the consumer.”

This statement is irresponsible and incorrect. Customers choose to buy Cisco products for a variety of concrete reasons. Customers buy our gear not only because of the hardware itself but also for the support, service, and trust in the Cisco name. That buying preference has led us to number one market positions in a variety of markets. A huge gulf separates customers expressing brand preference and a company acting as a monopoly.

For proof, look at buying and support processes. As with all computer gear, the initial cost is a mere fraction of the total management and maintenance costs over the life of that equipment. Cisco helps customers reduce those ongoing costs in a variety of ways: The ability to configure and order products on our award-winning Cisco Connection Online Web site, a superior support structure built into CO, and a wide number of Cisco Certified Internetwork Experts qualified to design with and operate our equipment.

In the enterprise and consumer networking markets, Cisco faces cut-rate, but again, customers choose Cisco because we provide high-quality hardware, software, and services. You make this point yourself quite eloquently: “After all, when I want to get connected, I ask for a Cisco box too… They are like tanks. Once configured, they continue working through thick and thin. Power outages, network topology changes, and network operating system changes seem to have no effect on them. They don’t crash, and don’t take forever to boot up… Like the Energizer bunny, they keep going and going.”

You also assert that prices have stayed high while products have not advanced. Neither of these statements is true. In your analysis of the 2501 router, you claim the product is fundamentally still a router, yet you admit that the device’s features are more advanced, supports more protocols, and is more optimized. You could also add that today’s router provides easier management and higher port densities than its predecessors did. In fact, the theory of Moore’s Law is completely applicable in the networking industry. Over a five-year period (1992–1997), for example, the price of Cisco’s 7000 router line dropped significantly, while port densities on the product family increased to yield a 16-fold boost in performance. As a result, over that five-year period, Cisco’s price/performance ratio outpaced Moore’s Law by almost 25 percent.

Providing solid technology, good customer service, and support are all key to Cisco’s successes, and those factors are also reflected in the pricing of our products. Customers evidently believe those prices are fair, since they’ve made us number one.

Sincerely,
Larry Lang
Vice President
Cisco Systems, Inc.

Robert Hashemian responds:
One of the greatest assets of Internet Telephony magazine is the freedom it gives its columnists to express their opinions uncensored. This column was a good example. I respect the feedback I received and reiterate that I am a believer in Cisco quality. I also believe that there is a premium to be paid for good quality. But I don’t believe that my assertion of the Cisco routers’ high prices was unfounded or unreasonable. Perhaps the usage of word ‘conspiracy’ was a bit exaggerated. It was meant colloquially and certainly not literally.


I read your article in Internet Telephony Online Magazine, and I wonder if you could help me out. I am doing a market survey of router performance as my master thesis. I have tried to contact the vendors regarding obtaining some information about parameters that they should give you when they advertise how good their product is; it has so much “horsepower” (packets per seconds) etc... Though what they don’t want to tell you are the critical factors about their router.

The jitter, latency and packet loss are very important for VoIP but are the vendors willing to provide these values? The answer is NO! Therefore I wonder if you have some ways of obtaining these parameters. I have hit a brick wall trying to get this kind of info for six weeks now. If I wanted to buy a car and met with the same attitude when asking about the cars’ technical details, I would tell the dealer and the car maker to get stuffed and turn to another dealer and car make. But, obviously in the world of computers, it is the vendors who are calling the shots.

I would be very grateful if you could help me out in getting data on jitter, latency, and packet loss for the following routers:

ACC (Tigris 3 slot, Amazon, Colorado); Cisco (2610, 3640); Nortel/Bay (ASN, ARN); 3Com (NetBuilder II, SuperStack II 5xx).

Thank you for a great article and I look forward to hearing from you.

Christofer Sthl
Undergraduate,
Royal Institute of Technology, KTH

Editor’s note: I’m tossing this one out to the vendors. If any vendors care to respond, please send e-mail to ggalitzine@tmcnet.com.


In your well-written Reality Check (September 1999), you asked whether folks had “another theory why router and switch prices don’t drop.” Actually, the clues to TWO fairly simple ones are within your piece:

  1. They’re tough. You mentioned how cheap scanners have become, and you’re right; but “cheap” means just that — cheap. Today’s $90-or-less scanner doesn’t begin to have the rugged build of the older higher-priced ones. It’s like comparing a heavy 1950s-model telephone, which you’d practically have to sledgehammer to kill, to a flimsy $9.95 telephone of today. As you said, Cisco routers “are like tanks.” Building-in that sort of reliability just isn’t cheap and probably never will be.
  2. They’re not (and never will be) mass-produced, at least not the way consumer products are. Yes, Cisco makes many of its products, but compare the quantity with, again, the scanners or video games you mentioned. Obviously, the more you make of any product, the less each one’s retail price needs to be in order to amortize the company’s initial investment. And this characteristic, too, probably won’t ever change: There are billions of consumers, but there almost surely never will be more than many thousands of routers and switches.

— Bryce Wray







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