Gordon, The regionals are responsible making sure that they provide access and transit to/from the NSFNET NAPs to all of the regional's US R&E customers as part of their cooperative agreements with NSF for RNP support. If they have an agreement with an NSP then presumably their NSP will be encumbered by the regional to meet this condition. Thus, if NSP N is provisioning regional R, then N must touch down at all NAPs and advertise connectivity to all of R's R&E customers and accept traffic to R's R&E customers at the NAPs. If a provider P pays for a connection to the NAP, then it should be able to peer with N for the purposes of getting traffic to/from R's R&E customers. Traffic between N and P for traffic other than R's R&E traffic is not part of the deal. Presumably this "other" traffic would be part of a broader inter-provider agreement between N and P. The goal for the above is to provide a reasonable level of non-discriminatory access to the US R&E community that is being supported by the NSF awards to the RNPs. peter