Particularly frothy at the moment, say Spreng and others, are those companies working in the so-called market for metro networks. Though it has yet to ship any product, Cyras has scored millions of VC dollars. A gigabit is one billion bits. In spite of its success, Cyras is playing in an increasingly crowded field. It's really hard to tell them apart.
Some venture capitalists acknowledge some shaking out is inevitable.
Dallas-based Allegiance Telecom Inc. The industry is rapidly consolidating. This is the final link of fiber cable being buried in a section of El Camino Real near Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto. Still, venture capitalists insist that optical networking companies will fare better than dot-coms. They're not retail businesses and not driven by advertising, so they tend not to be as volatile as many Web site companies are. The technical complexity of the field, too, makes it harder for a glib MBA or liberal arts graduate to sell a half-formed business proposal.