Thanks to all for all the feedback! It seems what a lot of people are saying is that it's almost acceptable (in that, you shouldn't if you can afford other devices), given the right time and engineering. The cost of supporting seems to be unanimously higher then going with a specific vendor. A number of people have noted that some of the support that the various packages of software for handling routing protocols may not play correctly with the os layer or even other packages. (IE: routing) I've seen confliction on if *bsd or linux is better, this (hopefully) isn't that surprising to anyone. The consensus is that when something breaks it takes longer to fix and requires greater technical aptitude. Finally, it appears as if, contrary to what the articles are saying, not many people are actively considering such a move. However, it is more common in smaller businesses starting new locations or building out. A lot of people seemed to of assumed the absolute worse case (which, might I add, is generally what I was looking for) scenario: a dusty box with interesting hardware out-of-the-box kernel no research a MSMD approach What about better case situations?* IE: toe cards custom kernel no moving parts (ie: hard drive, maybe fans if possible) up-to-date software packages with internal coders to fix ugly bugs, etc actual research into what packages & hardware would be best *This deviates from operational and gets into the more technical issues, so it's actually a not a question I'm looking for you kind folks to answer. But I feel I have to vindicate myself a little bit as my technical skills were called into question for even posting the original email... ;) Once again, thanks everyone!