One notable company that didn't build an MSE box was Cisco. Lucent likewise put its CBX 3500 out with an eye toward this market (see Neptune Arrives and Lucent Joins the Edge Crowd). Nortel built its MPE 9000 router, internally called Neptune, to handle the edge-router requirements the company was hearing from carriers. Some of those vendors' systems, such as Juniper's M320, were crafted specifically for the MSE. (NYSE/Toronto: NT), Riverstone Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: CIEN), Hammerhead Systems Inc., Laurel Networks Inc., Lucent Technologies Inc. Vendors, besides Juniper, pointing products at the MSE have included Alcatel (NYSE: ALA Paris: CGEP:PA), Ciena Corp. So many carriers preached the multiservice edge that the concept got its own abbreviation: MSE. 'But the bigger issue is that the migration, moving people onto common edge platforms for Layer 2 and Layer 3 services, has not happened at the big incumbent vendors yet.' 'It hasn't really panned out like people had hoped, partly because some of the capability can be done by using router vendors like Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) and Juniper,' says Mark Seery, an analyst with RHK Inc. But some in the business are saying the multiservice edge in general is off to a slow start. Stevens was talking mostly about the legacy Layer 2 market - where multiple networks of Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) or Frame Relay traffic would join into a single Internet Protocol (IP) core to be carried by Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS). 'It's what said they wanted, but they haven't been proving it with their wallets.' 'It hasn't evolved like we all thought it would,' says Scott Stevens, vice president of system engineering at Juniper Networks Inc. But now it appears the market for these routers won't hit high volumes until next year. Last year saw a rash of specialized multiservice edge routers being launched in response to carrier requests. What was supposed to be a hot router market has turned tepid, vendors say, as the multiservice edge isn't banking the kinds of sales vendors had hoped for.

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