CISCO, AVICI BETTINGON METRO

With the dwindling odds of pulling in big money deals at the network core, Cisco Systems and Avici Systems are gambling on smaller metro optical equipment.

Cisco last week topped off its metro equipment with a new metro IP access router and two expansions to its 12000 series routers. This week, Avici will roll out a stackable switch router, which is a scaled-down version of its core Terabit switch router.

"Customers have built out of large POPs, but they need to continue incremental investments to leverage that," said Robert Redford, director of marketing for Cisco's public carrier IP group.

The big question is whether those lures will convince providers to spend in the current market. Cisco so far has pulled in Sprint E|Solutions and a couple European companies for some of the products.

"We're talking about products that improve scale and performance while reducing costs," said Barry Tishgart, director of IP product management for Sprint E|Solutions. 

Others, too, appear receptive, though not necessarily to Cisco.

"A portion of our annual capital program is directed toward improving our unit cost structure, and we look to bandwidth investments, along with equipment to enable the bandwidth to pay back in less than two years," said Jack Norris, head of customer service and network for service provider Equant.

The idea behind the new Cisco 10720 is to extend services to the metro access ring with IP, wrapping together high-speed Ethernet, IP transport and routing and enables IP services.

"Typically, customers interface to metro optical networks at the far end and then back haul it to the POP about 10 to 100 km away over many Sonet rings," said Jeff Baher, senior marketing manager for Cisco.

Similarly, Avici's stackable switch router is intended for smaller POPs or for providers with smaller cores.

"We recognize that carrier capex forecasts have come down significantly in the last few quarters," said Peter Chadwick, vice president of product management for Avici.

It's a strategy that is taking into account economic realities.

"Providers have to spend at the edge to continue to keep up with service requirements," said Chris Nicoll, vice president for Current Analysis. "Core systems have [their] role, but--especially now--[vendors] need to give service providers more entry points."