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Juniper takes router lead
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March 29, 2000: 6:21 p.m. ET
CEO says company ready to battle the competition with speedy M160 devices
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - It's all about speed in the dot.com domain, and Juniper Networks, a leading provider of computer networking equipment, is taking a quantum leap forward with its new and faster Internet router - the M160 - that will transmit 10 billion bits of information every second, according to its top executive.
"The M160 is four times faster than the previous product we shipped, which was already faster than anything on the market," Juniper Networks Chairman, CEO and President Scott Kriens, told CNNfn's Before Hours on Wednesday. "In some ways, it's almost staggering, four million phone calls simultaneously supported in one system, three feet tall."
Routers, which are devices that forward data packets across networks, serve as an Internet backbone by interconnecting these networks.
With the M160, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company is positioning itself to corner more of the Internet market, and to do it quickly, Kriens said.
"One of the most dangerous things anyone can assume is that the Internet has reached its potential. There's a lot of headroom in this market. Really, whoever grows the fastest, wins," he said.
Kriens said the company's strategy was to continue investing in research and development, to build its competitive advantage in the Internet infrastructure space and to expand into the optical networking segment. "The optical market that sits underneath is at least as big, if not bigger by most measures, with about $250 billion spent annually to build networks around the world," Kriens said.
Despite formidable competition from industry heavyweights like Cisco Systems (CSCO: Research, Estimates), Juniper's market share jumped from 2.8 percent in 1998 to 14.8 percent in 1999, based on the strength of its products, he said. Juniper's revenue grew from $4 million in 1998 to $103 million last year.
Juniper has been in a battle for bragging rights with Cisco, and got the upper hand Tuesday when it rolled out the M160, which is faster than Cisco's top-end router.
 The company's current market capitalization stands at about $46.8 billion.
Juniper shares took a nosedive Wednesday, dropping 19 to close at 288 on the Nasdaq. The Nasdaq composite index closed down nearly 4 percent for the day as investors apparently moved money from high-priced tech stocks to cheaper cyclical stocks. 
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Juniper Networks
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