Martin, You can 'see' anything you'd like, buy your reality does not match everyone else's -- my opinion, of course. QoS is a myth -- it doesn't exist. What you're obviosuly trying to tell us is that less-than-best- effort is somehow good? Never sell it. This vein will come back and bite you guys who think like this. - ferg -- "Hannigan, Martin" <hannigan@verisign.com> wrote:

What I'm interested in is how the two service providers will build a two tiered Internet.

The PSTN is tiered both in architecture and operation. Switching hiearchies and a seperate SS7 network which is basically a billing network. I think the thought is service levels vs. congestion control. For example, CO's have call overflow mechanisms to tandem switch points which basically seek out excess capacity and use it as overflow for call termination if and when possible. I could see an internet hiearchy where preferred traffic was switch onto hicap overflow links with controlled congestion and other traffic, non premium traffic, "got a fast busy". -M< -- "Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet fergdawg@netzero.net or fergdawg@sbcglobal.net ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/