"The largest DPI vendor, it turns out, is Cisco. The giant networker acquired DPI supplier p-cube in 2004 for $200 million and so Cisco has an inside track on all those networks built from Cisco switches and routers. "

"Many cable television customers like Comcast and some phone customers enabled Sandvine to double its revenue in the fiscal year ended November 2006, to 32 million Canadian dollars (US$28 million), and almost break even. It expects to reach sales of C$50 million to C$60 million in the November 2007 year. At a recent Toronto price of C$3.50, the company is valued at C$430 million."

"But another DPI leader is selling at a bargain-basement price, after warning investors last week that its March quarter sales will fall short of expectations. Nasdaq-listed Allot Communications (ALLT) fell from above 9 to around 7, for a market value of about $145 million. Allot came public in November at $12 and finished 2006 with $34 million in revenue and four cents a share in earnings. It expected sales of almost $10 million in the March quarter, but admitted last Monday that they will probably fall below $8.3 million. Allot blamed its third-party distributors for the shortfall. Yet Allot says that it's doing fine in its direct sales to telecom carriers. Investor relations head Jay Kalish told me that the company is a contender in many of the ongoing requisition plans, with a box Allot is developing that will run at 10 Gigabits a second, like Sandvine's. The product will be available when networks are ready to buy in the third quarter. Meanwhile, Allot had more than $80 million in cash on its December balance sheet, so the disappointed stock market is really valuing the company at about $70 million. That's around 1.5 times this year's sales for Allot, compared with 7 times sales for Sandvine."

"network arms merchant"