There is an interesting column in PC Mag http://www.pcmag.com/issues/1513/pcmg0017.htm regarding "Will the Internet Crash" but Machrone understands the technology better than to do a chicken little imitation. Anyway, he has an anecdote about what PC Mag's BBS did to telco usage patterns with about 100 dialup lines in use nationally. I know that Bell Canada in the toronto area of Canada and BC Tel in Vancouver have also run into problems caused by Internet dialup usage patterns that lead BC-Tel to drop selling Centrex to ISP's and Bell Canada to attempt putting ISP's into a higher tariff category. I suppose other telcos are running into similar capacity problems. Anyway, since some of the core providers in North America are telcos (Sprint, MCI) and since all the other ones work rather closely with the telcos for obvious reasons, I have a question. Has anybody looked at the practicality of installing modem pools in each telco switch location to grab the dialup user's traffic at the IP level and then route it to their ISP of choice for authentication and further routing. In other words, an ISP wouldn't buy phone lines, modems and terminal servers, they would buy IP access ports. I have heard of something like this (I think) going on in Britain where Demon Internet services has Energis providing their dialin lines via something called the Virtual POP in which Demon has no equipment located outside their NOC and has the ability to switch capacity from location to location as load patterns change. Of course, this is probably not working at the IP level but simply dealing with routing of digitized switched audio calls. Michael Dillon ISP & Internet Consulting Memra Software Inc. Fax: +1-604-546-3049 http://www.memra.com E-mail: michael@memra.com