Subject: Re: M$ Monitor: Justice Stops Short
Telford001 (Telford001@aol.com)
Date: Thu, 21 May 1998 13:20:32 EDT
From: Telford001 <Telford001@aol.com> Message-Id: <4cb7ceb5.35646262@aol.com> Date: Thu, 21 May 1998 13:20:32 EDT To: roundtable@cni.org Subject: Re: M$ Monitor: Justice Stops Short
Microsoft is not the only actual or would-be monopolist that may be
harming the public good by its business practices. Cisco Systems, Inc.
dominates the internet infrastructure equipment market in a way that
increases the cost of expanding the internet to the detriment of the
less affluent parts of the population. Furthermore, Cisco's routing
technology like Microsoft's operating system technology is extremely
backward.
The use of a backward operating system obviously harms the individual
user of the computer. Microsoft worsens the situation with regard to
operating systems by working to limit user choice with regard to
operating system.
Cisco's market dominance is even more insidious because users have no
influence over the providers in the choice of the packet switching
technology from which the core networks within the Internet are
constructed. Nevertheless, users are probably adversely affected
because the poor architecture of the Cisco packet switching technology
may be responsible for routing instability within the core networks and
wastage of bandwidth that costs billions of dollars.
Cisco manipulates standards through the IETF to strenghten its market
dominance and to restrain trade. Moreover, Cisco uses a method of
"selective dumping" to prevent more efficient lower cost
competitors from penetrating the packet switching market. In the case
of <A HREF="http://members.aol.com/Telford001/">Telford Tools, Inc.</A>,
we produce higher performance packet switching technology at a cost 1-2
orders of magnitude less than comparable Cisco technology. Our natural
market comprises large educational institutions and other organizations
that have large networking needs but do not necessary have the ability
to spend $100-120,000 for large routers. Cisco has apparently targeted
such organizations for free grants of routing technology.
Such grants provide recipient organizations with
no real benefits because
1. TTI and others could supply comparable technology
at costs much lower than Cisco's retail prices,
2. such grants distort budgets of the recipient organizations
in deleterious ways (future budget allocations are typically
a function of current allocations) and
3. Cisco packet switching technology (but not all
packet switching technology) tends toward
obsolescence in about 2 years after introduction
(at which point there is no obvious reason to assume
Cisco will continue the grant program).
Yet, these grants have the effect of suffocating any potential
competitors by denying them any potential market (and beta test sites).
One could perhaps argue that TTI and similar companies should just look
for other markets where we would not run into the Cisco hydra.
Unfortunately, Ci$co like M$ is everywhere.
Joachim Martillo
<telford001@aol.com>
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