oh come on, curtis. don't get holier-than-thou on us. we know quality is important to ANS; quality is important to ALL of us. asserting anything to the contrary is simply insulting to everyone here. EACH of the large networks (including ANS) has done their share of javelin-catching in the past and will do so again at some time in the future. it is, however, useful that we don't all seem to try and catch the same ones at the same time. that's one (surprise) advantage of having different network architectures. once again, genetic diversity is a strength. as for "who's right", that isn't a very interesting discussion because you can't define "right" except in self-referential terms. you can, however, talk about how different designs have different strengths and different distribution of cost functions. some networks make some things easier, and some networks make a different set of things easier. which is better for the application depends on the weights of the terms in the system cost and service value polynomials. (note that there may not be just one of each of those polynomials) So let's not get catty here. a round of "My network's better than your network!" isn't obviously useful. Cheers, and here's to quiet Thanksgiving in everyone's NOC -mo