It's amazing what one little microchip can do.
Shares of networking expert Alcatel-Lucent
What did Lucent do to deserve all this investor love? The company introduced the FP3 networking chip, capable of quadrupling the bandwidth of today's biggest, baddest backbone routers. Micron Technology
Working the environmental angle hard, the company also stressed the new chip's lower power draws and smaller physical footprint. These monster routers will take up less space in the data center while sipping about half of the previous generation's electrical juice and delivering blistering performance.
"This is the key to unlock a new world of online communications," said Alcatel-Lucent CEO Ben Verwaayen. "It's easy to think the Internet of today does all it will ever be capable of, but we have scarcely scratched the surface of its potential."
At a time when analysts see price erosion reducing the value of close rivals Juniper Networks
Mind you, finished products won't be available until the middle of 2012, which gives the rest of the sector some time to catch up -- if itcan. Cisco was happy to introduce a much slower solution as recently as March of 2010, so there's some catching up to do here.
The new line cards will be compatible with Alcatel routers from 2004 onward, which opens an easy path to upgrades for existing customers. They're also compatible with traffic of many kinds, from cable to mobile to DSL and direct Ethernet connections. So the next time known Alcatel customers from Level 3 Communications
Alcatel shares have now nearly doubled since I called the company a mess and wondered whether there was any hope for the future. This announcement is a big part of Alcatel's answer as the company now looks assured to get a generous slice of this generation of network builds.
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