Linksys is a very important name in the World of Always-On.

Linksys, now a unit of Cisco, makes home routers, and it dominates the retail channel for wireless networking.

Since acquiring the company 10 months ago Cisco has mainly left it alone, just sending one of its executives down to Irvine to teach Cisco's ways to Linksys and learn Linksys' ways for Cisco. Founder Victor Tsao remains in charge.

Talk to many Linksys competitors, like Siemens or 2Wire or Netopia, and you're going to hear a lot about how things are done. You're going to hear a lot of details about wireless networking technologies, 802.11 this-and-that, about antennas and radios, all the kinds of stuff analysts like me want to hear about.

You know something? It's all bunk.

What matters more than how, a lot more. And in his interview with C|Net recently, Tsao talked nothing but what.

The what this time is Voice Over IP. It's the what phone companies care about, the what customers care about. And all he really said to C|Net was, we can do that.

We have a product right now--an analog terminal adapter for VoIP. Within a month or two, we will work with some voice service providers in the U.S. to launch this product. That will be the first one. A lot more products will come out in the second part of this year.

Notice the understatement. We have a product, and within a month or two will launch it with some voice service providers.

This is the way Tsao works. You don't talk about when the press wants to, or even when you have a solution. You talk about it when you're just about to blow everyone away with it, when you've got your ducks in a row with service providers.

And then you speak quietly.

Your Clue: don't push for the front page. Take care of business and, in time, it will come to you as your due.