So I guess that means you know more than all those smart people (on both the service provider side and equipment side) who are helping incorporate lessons from Frame Relay and ATM circuit routing into MPLS?
Yep. I can put together two and two and get four. I'm not going to read yet another lecture on computational complexity of adaptive circuit routing but so far nobody figured out a way to make it work in a network comparable to the current Internet in size. That's why nobody is even attempting to do MPLS or whatever across IXPs and only do in in the interior (actually this is also misguided, but for different reasons, having more to do with implementation complexity). BTW, a good many smart people who actually built the biggest chunks of the Internet backbone and the software which keeps it running share my opinion. In any case, the argument that million lemmings cant be all wrong is particularly hilarious. The issue of virtual circuit vs per-hop routing was discussed extensively in this forum years ago (in ATM vs IP context) and the consensus was pretty much against ATM. I would advise you to review the archives and see for yourself. Since there were no dramatic advances in either understanding of the problem, circuit-routing algorithms, or basic computing technology (well, the quantum computing can concievably solve the computablibity problem for circuit routing, but not any time soon :) i see little reason to start the arguments all over again. Of course, you may have something really new to say on the topic, but i would check that that wasn't already beaten to death. Regards, --vadim