Still, the overall news from this tech bellwether was the sort that builds confidence. With so many corporations and consumers looking to use the Net to do so many new things -- from VoIP at big companies to IPTV rollouts by telecoms like AT&T (T ) and Verizon (VZ ) -- there's little doubt that Cisco holds an enviable hand. "Companies and service providers have no choice but to buy bigger, faster gear just to keep up with the rise in data traffic," says Infonetics' Howard. "And Cisco is sitting in the best spot to take advantage of this force of bandwidth, which simply cannot be stopped."