---------------------- Forwarded by Stinson Gibner/HOU/ECT on 01/03/2001 
08:54 AM ---------------------------


Stinson Gibner
12/27/2000 05:04 PM
To: Nick Bambos <bambos@stanford.edu> @ ENRON
cc:  
Subject: Re: Stanford Project  

Nick,

Hope you had a nice Christmas.  Best wishes for the New Year.   

It would certainly be great to see you and to meet Eric some time in the next 
few months.     Everyone here
was very impressed with Giuseppe and we are eager to have another of your 
students come to Enron.

Enron Broadband is continuing to evolve and the current vision is to rely on 
Enron's trading expertise while trying to
minimize our role as an engineering company and innovator of technology.   I 
spoke recently with Jim Fallon, the current
head trader in EBS, and we put together a short list of topics of interest 
where you might be able to help educate us.
I put these in the order of interest (to Mr. Fallon).

1.   Where will bandwidth prices go?   The direction of prices, obviously is 
the concern of any trader.   We realize that 
technological innovation will continue to drive down prices, but are still 
interested in trying to quantify how fast prices will fall,  
if there are likely to be certain bottlenecks in the fiber network where you 
could see prices stable or rising for some length of time,  
if there are applications on the horizon which would use such prodigious 
amounts of bandwidth as to have some effect on pricing, 
and if there is a rational way of trying to quantify the timing and effect on 
prices of new technologies.
 The term "bandwidth" might primarily mean lit fiberoptic capacity, but could 
also incompass dark fiber, or IP transit and transport 
pricing.

2.  During the last year, Enron purchased a company known as "Warpspeed" in 
order to acquire their MetaRouter technology.   To quote from the Enron press 
release:

"MetaRouter sends signals throughout distributed networks to determine the 
optimal connectivity paths for any size bandwidth capacity from anywhere in 
the world. Capable of processing thousands of connections per second, 
MetaRouter significantly enhances Enron,s ability to automate circuit 
provisioning."

There may be two separate questions to ask here.   First,  in the context of 
the current market (or the market which may develop in the next 1-2 years), 
will the MetaRouter be a commercially viable product?   That is,  will it 
address an actual need in the market, or would it be more cost effective just 
to use technicians with jumper cables to provision circuits?

The second question (our first real technical question):  is the MetaRouter 
technology scalable?     Before starting on this project, Vince and I will 
need to make the proper introductions with the principles who are 
implementing this technology.

3.  Aggregation of loads.   A recurring question comes from a number of areas 
such as IP, network storage, and   streaming media transport sales:  What 
value can I get form aggregating customers, each of which has some type of 
stochastic load profile?   Giuseppe touched on this problem as it relates to 
IP transport, but it may be interesting to try and look in more detail.    
The main stumbling block may be that we currently have basically no actual 
customer data.   I am told that in a few months we will have some more useful 
history.   My understanding is that what will be available will be 5-minute 
averages of usage, so we still will not know on a short time scale what the 
distribution of load looks like.


I hope that this gives you enough information to get some idea of what our 
concerns are at this point.   Please let me know your thoughts about these 
topics.   I would expect, for instance that question number 1 may not be 
reasonable as a research project, but might be a question which you would 
feel comfortable in addressing by giving us  your qualitative opinions, maybe 
in the form of a talk here at Enron.    


Again,  let me know your thoughts, and I look forward to seeing you again 
soon.

Stinson






Nick Bambos <bambos@stanford.edu> on 12/20/2000 12:14:40 PM
To: Vince.J.Kaminski@enron.com
cc: Stinson.Gibner@enron.com 
Subject: Stanford Project


Hello Vince and Stinson,

First of all,

BEST WISHES FOR HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!!

If you are in the Stanford area during the holidays, let's get together
some time to have dinner.

I have formally established the project - thanks again for funding
it - and I have also recruited the second PhD student. His name is
Eric Cope, and he is a top-notch student, very mature, and entrepreneurial!

We have started working on some interesting problems in this area. I would
hope that Eric could spend the coming summer at Enron to get immersed into
the "problem/opportunity generation environment." That really helps the 
student
to develop a realistic vision about their research.

Perhaps, our whole team could visit Enron again some time in the next quarter,
say in March or so, to discuss the research issues we are pursuing. And of 
course
you could visit us before that too.


With my WARMEST WISHES,

Nick