What I mean is constructivity. Repeated shows of faults does not contribute to the solution. This is just whining in public. So, here is my try to discuss what we all can do: I propose: Whoever has dial up customers, and cannot, for one reason or the other convince them, to keep the interface up, should do the following: 1)- explain the customer that the link cannot go up and down all the time. - that rapid changes in the link will not be propagated, but result in unreachability of his computer/network. - that such an arrangement is not suitable to announce reachability of his host to the outside, since nobody knows when he will actually be reachable (so, no email directly to his address, don't advertise it as ftp address, etc.) 2) pull the route up via a loopback interface and a bigger metric. When the dial interface comes up, the route via the loopback will be overridden by the better 'connected' route. this keeps the route flap within the same router This is not 'announcing lies', the customer 'lives' in that router. This is a contribution to the stability of the routing environment. I myself do not attach LANs via dial-up, and if, the route is aggregated to the overall routes of the communication server where the customer dials into. Opinions, please? Mike ------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael F. Nittmann mn@ios.com Senior Network Architect ------------ IDT/IOS - Internet Online Services ---------- 294 State Street -------- Hackensack, NJ 07601 ------ ---- +1 (201) 928 1000 xt. 500 -- +1 (201) 928 1057 FAX +1 (201) 441 5861 Pager \/