Sean, I am trying learn and understand and if I was unnecessarily harsh on sprint I apologize. Thank you for setting forth your point of view as eloquently as you have. I hope that MERIT and ANS will address the issues that you have raised. I see the routing arbiter as one a part of the new architecture that I have so far not understood and I was/am beginning to wonder whether it might hold some promise for solving some of the backbone stress problems I wrote about in my last newsletter. please remember that i have not officially published anything on this issue yet. Nsf is spending $10 million a year on the 2 RA coop agreements....right? seems like they should be getting something more useful for the money than so far has been the case. ******************************************************************** Gordon Cook, Editor & Publisher Subscriptions: Individ-ascii $85 The COOK Report on Internet Individ. hard copy $150 431 Greenway Ave, Ewing, NJ 08618 Small Corp & Gov't $200 (609) 882-2572 Corporate $350 Internet: cook@cookreport.com Corporate Site Lic. $650 Web: http://pobox.com/cook/ Newly expanded COOK Report Web Pages ********************************************************************