One thing I'm personally interested in is the growth of municipal FTTx that's starting to happen around the US and possibly applying that model to highly rural areas (e.g. 10 mile long town with no side streets, existing utility polls, 250 or so homes) and doing a realistic cost analysis of what that would take. What options are out there for Active-Ethernet hardware. Ideally something that could handle G.8032 and 802.1ad in hardware for the distribution side (24 or 48-port SFP metro switch) and something inexpensive for the access side but still managed (e.g. a 4-port switch with an SFP uplink supporting Q-in-Q). I'm really looking for something cheap to keep costs down for a proof-of-concept. The stuff from Cisco and even Ciena is a bit more expensive than my target. -- Ray Patrick Soucy Network Engineer University of Maine System T: 207-561-3526 F: 207-561-3531 MaineREN, Maine's Research and Education Network www.maineren.net