Maybe I should add that I'm looking at ATM WAN switches and several-thousand-mile hauls. Are ATM WAN switches more sensitive? Can telcos clean up the noise on such a long haul as opposed to several-hundred-mile hauls. My counters on the routers for the 'short' haul lines are indeed zero.
If you can see errors, put on yor camo gear. Lines, international or otherwise, should run clean, whatever equipment is connected so long as it's correctly configured. Like 0 errors. The differentiators between routes and telcos are (a) how often you get a problem, and (b) how quickly it gets fixed (i.e. there shouldn't be differences in quiescent BER - though route, technology and organization competence may well affect MTBF, MTTR, Availability etc.) -- Alex Bligh GX Networks (formerly Xara Networks)