Hello, if this is not the right list, please tell me so. Otherwise: Saudi Arabia will connect the whole country through one party (KACST), in the beginning to UUNET in the US. I'd like to have an advice, whether it is better to connect to - an internat. exchange / NAP/MAE (and have the transit/uplike and peering there) - or directly to a large ISP like UUNET/MCI/Sprint? Out of redundancy (not financial) reasons there will be a link to Europe. So the same questions like above applies and additional the question whether to connect to TEN-34 or EBONE - which are supposed to be a/the European backbone. How are the chances today to have some peerings and not going all the traffic through an transit/uplink ISP? On a sidenote: it is 50% cheaper to dump the traffic in the US than in Europe. Is it (for European ISPs) cheaper to have raw bandwidth to US (from Europe) plus uplink-ISP fee than connecting to e.g. MAE-Frankfurt ?! There seems to be some way still to go for a true worldwide Internet. With regards, Peter Merdian -- currently at KACST, Saudi Arabia