Bits and pieces of what may be a single story have been filtering out over the last couple of days regarding the potential health risks caused by our increasing bombardment with radiation from wireless networking gear.

As the leading maker of the networking gear that keeps the Internet running, Cisco Systems Inc. is an Internet company through and through.

Cisco Systems, which has focused on selling networking gear to companies and large institutions rather than to telephone companies, is by far the healthiest of the major equipment suppliers.

Intel is still milking the Chinese infrastructure stimulus, this time by aiming Tunnel Creek at China's networking gear.

Netgear, a leading maker of wireless networking gear, will be selling a similar system next month for about $300.

It recently gained two major converts to its design: Agere Systems, a maker of next-generation cellphones, and Teranetics, which makes high-speed networking gear for corporate data centers.

Alcatel, the French telecommunications equipment giant, said yesterday that it would acquire Astral Point Communications, a privately held manufacturer of optical networking gear.

The group used a standard chip-making process to design a central component of optical networking gear that is potentially more than 10 times as fast as the highest-performance commercial products available today.

Northern Telecom is North America's No. 2 maker of equipment for big telecommunications systems, while Bay mostly sells local networking gear to individual companies and organizations.

Cisco Systems Inc., for example, is selling $5 million a day worth of its networking gear from its Web site to corporate customers.