Before you count-out switched FDDI, note that there are other FDDI switches in the world these days (with all deference to the Gigaswith's pioneering efforts, in whose hands our butts are held). They look to have good performance and the cost-per-port is rather lower. (Getting to be second and third, etc, is often a considerable advantage.) It's too bad there isn't an "official" way to run larger MTU (eg, FDDI) with 100baseTX running point-to-point Full-Duplex. Some of the chips even have control bits ignore MTU-exceeded conditions. The packet length limits are required only for Ethernet "cable mode" operations where collissions must be detected. In point-to-point Full-Duplex service, this is obviously a non-issue and an FDDI MTU would work just fine. So if there was an "official" (ie, interoperagble) large-packet mode and somebody built a 100baseTX switch that could handle jumbograms, then I think that Full-Duplexed Switched 100baseTX *would* be the medium of choice for many, many tasks - moderate-sized exchange points being one of them. Heck, I'd use it for interior wiring in my superhubs. But there are customers for whom end-to-end MTU is a buying issue. Bogus or not, it is a very real issue. -mo