pk>How the heck are people able to deploy native-IP networks pk>with these kinds of limitations/problems with QoS? Or did I pk>miss something about QoS recently? va>Yep. The biggest QoS secret is that nobody actually needs va>it. Bandwidth is cheap and is growing cheaper. The va>manpower needed to deploy and maintain QoS is getting va>more and more expensive. Overbuild strategies are the most common from what I've seen, but are also fragile. Technological history is replete with "overbuilds" that either ran into their end of life too soon, or were pressed into service far longer than the designers intended. [insert obligatory mickeysoft memory management flame-by-example] I'll agree that rather than concentrating on the latest and greatest QoS "if everyone adopted <foo> we'd be fine" strategies (that sound identical to the Promise of an ATM World), we should be concentrating on things that have been demonstrated to improve quality (CoS-based queueing, modern queue management, intra-domain CoS-tags, replacement of UDP by TCP wherever possible, content replication/caching, etc). The issue of adapting your CoS-queues -across the domain- to demand seems to me the sharp edge of real VoIP deployment. Cheers, Joe -- Disclaimer: "I'm the only one foolish enough to claim these opinions." Joe Provo, Manager 508.229.8400 x 3006 Interconnections and Technology Evaluation Fax 508.229.2375 Technology & Network Development, RCN <joe.provo@rcn.com>