Lucent is well ahead of Cisco in optical networking. Juniper recently raided Cisco for brilliant networking expert Yakov Rekhter. Cisco will downplay the grab, but let me put it this way, stealing Rekhter is like taking Charlie Watts out of the Rolling Stones. C.W. may not be the most visible guy in the Stones, but things would go into the crapper without him. Remember, Juniper built from the ground up for the Internet.
Cisco is an oldster in technology lineage.
Its routers are a decade old and aimed primarily at corporate computer networks. John Chambers could conceivably grab both Lucent and Juniper. Cisco is scared white about Juniper s penetration in the high-end router market. And Cisco knows it has nothing to counter the power of Bell Labs. There s a lot of junk at Lucent, but B.L. is still the crown jewel.