At this Westin Hotel Convention Center, just east of San Jose, Calif., a revival meeting is in progress. Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers, 50, struts across the stage wearing a gray tweed suit and preaching the gospel of the network to a packed, 8,000-strong congregation of the converted. We have made great strides, Chambers drawls in his West Virginian birch-beer-sweet voice, but we need to be ever vigilant, for around the corner, right outside this hall, lurks the enemy--Nortel, Lucent and start-up companies we've never heard of, jesters who would steal our cybercrown.
The audience, consisting of the truest of true...