yes, one can use freebsd as a router. and i think it's kick-ass that md5 tcp is being worked to freebsd's normal level of support. thank you! but we need to not lose sight that the flavors of isps is a bi-modal distribution; it's the labor/capex trade-off. in my daytime-job network, hi-touch is just not a scalable option, it's five nines and hands off. and i have to say that different commercial router vendors vary in quality and reliability. i rofl over the discussion here of using antique cisco 750Xes. in my personal research rack, it's a high-touch hodge-podge, commercial routers, freebsd routers, and small routing toys <http://wildlab.com/>. and this weekend i spent six++ hours cleaning up a mess due to the colo provider being too cheap to get both a/b power from the carrier hotel, so the one circuit made a mess. even in the developing economies, where labor is even cheaper than here in george's economic disaster, folk trying to build and maintain real commercial isps use real commercial routers. and yes, they cost too <bleeping> much, are too large, take too much power, and blow more heat than a vendor engineer blows smoke. randy