what a morass of confusion. on the one hand we have a metro peering fabric, which as linx, exchangepoint, paix, and lots of others have shown, is good. on another hand we have a metro peering fabric, which as mfs and ames showed, can be really bad. because we have a lot of hands we also have exchange-level peering, which as paix and six has shown, can be done safely. there's also a hand containing multiple instances of exchange level peering which was not done safely (and i'm not double counting ames and mfs here.) finally we have intermetro (wide area) peering, which has been shown to be a complete joke for peering for any number of reasons. before any of you argue further, please carefully define your terminology so the rest of us will know how to fill out our scorecards. -- Paul Vixie