One final post on this... I called today because I needed to announce a couple of new routes. I called their 877-37-LIGHT number...I get an amazing array of people when I call this line. The first lady is very nice, and even goes to check with somebody else ("BGP, I've heard of that"), and she tells me to email my filter change request to support@qwestip.com. Ok, sounds fair. I do so, at around 2:30. I wanted to get it in by 5, so I was in no rush. I also find out from the nice lady that Qwest has a webpage that will submit the request for me (qwestsource.net). I didn't have a username and password, so I filled out the form and waited for a response. At 3:30, I get the username and password for qwestsource. My luck, it doesn't work. Around 4:15, with not even an autoresponse from my email to support, I call the LIGHT number again. I get the most clued-sounding person I've talked to with Qwest yet. He's all crisp and Johnny TalkShow, and authoritively states "There's a special address for BGP requests. Email bgp@qwestip.net." I mention the bad username and password on qwestsource, and he says "Ah yes, that sometimes happens. Here's a number to call for the group that manages that..." So I hang up the phone, satisfied. I email bgp@qwestip.net, and pick up the phone to call about my qwestsource access. As I'm listening to the phone tell me that I've called the telco provisioning group, I see the bounce show up from bgp@qwestip.net. I'm had to laugh at that...some dude in this mass queue in a cubicle somewhere in Qwest is just sitting there talking like a tv character issuing bum information authoritively, with a strange hint of pleasure now that I think about it. So I call the LIGHT number one more time. Third time's the charm, apparently. I got a nice lady who put me right through to an engineer who had access to the filters. He added the filters, we cleared, and he was seeing all but one of the routes. We scratched our heads for a few minutes and cleared again, which of course fixed it. He then proceeds to log into the qwestsource backend to fix my account. All taken care of. So, I guess my bottom line is that Qwest has good people. But not a good setup. The problem isn't that the people I'm talking to aren't qualified to do their jobs, it's just that Qwest's setup makes me talk to the wrong people. I like UUnet's way. I call up, hit 2-1-1, enter a series of digits, #, another series of digits, #, and then I talk to the people who have enable. With Qwest, I still have to enter our account number, but I'm sure I end up in the same place the dsl customers go. At least, it seems like it. One thing I must give Qwest (this goes for UUnet as well) is that I have yet to wait on hold initially. I've spent a fair number of minutes on hold, but not until after talking to somebody first. If Qwest was setup like UUnet, I would think their IP customers would be much more content. What am I going to call Qwest about? Two things. Circuit down, routing change. Now that I have qwestsource working, I can submit requests. The circuit really shouldn't go down. Regardless, it would certainly be nice to be able to quickly talk to the people in charge of running the network without trying to con my way through mostly good intentioned front line phone jockeys. Network seems pretty solid though, and I can live with the occaisional support escapades when cutting my price in half and increasing my available bandwidth significantly...overall, I'm satisfied so far. It's not like I have a lot of time to give to this craziness, but if I have to choose two from "bandwidth, really inexpensive, and my time", I'd have to be spending somebody else's money to not pick the first two... Andy xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Andy Dills 301-682-9972 Xecunet, LLC www.xecu.net xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Dialup * Webhosting * E-Commerce * High-Speed Access