First of all, i have to say i like Stephen ideal when it comes to his comments about networking. the networking field is in an evulotion period where is all about enhanced performance, i will be precise to say efficent dynamic networking except static.
from my research the evolution period means to me that cisco systems originally from Hawaii university is a very good network systems when it comes to internetwork. from the next year cisco is coming out with multi-gigabit ethernet. which means that is more advanced and user-friendly plus the benefits that comes with it, like easy and reliable to access and to retrieve file and packets or frames from the internet and to connect the internet as well.
storage networking is said to be most reliable and effecient too but very expensive to run the cost. for intranet and extranet is immaculate for it's use.
morever, i think microsoft is got to enhanced his research on the ram,rom and few components of the router or the cpu of it's systems inorder to compete with cisco's systems internetwork. plus enhanced connections like the wires for instance ethernet,fiber,usb's cable and the rest. etc's