I am a participant, as a 'listener', to the nanog. I understand its origins and also applaud how information is shared among 'competitive' entities ie ISPs. Even though I work for a router company ( I am the Internet sales manager with Bay) I look at the Internet as a global 'homogeneous' infrastructure. Inherent in its design and hw\sw features, are a set of problems. Is there any way to identify a common set of problems, regardless of whether the underlying product is Bay or Cisco, and commit to resolving it? The 'net' is that if the Internet, of multivendor routers, is viewed as a single global entity requiring a uniform enhancement, what would that be? What is the barrier to resolving this problem? I am dealing with an internet web enablement company here in CA that provides superior Internet language sets, tools, and technologies. My belief is that their expertise could be focused on enhancing and optimizing the Internet as if it were a single entity through the use of its offering of internet based languages (perl, tcl, c++..), compilers, support and consulting. We are all working to build an optimal Internet infrasturcture and the software\web enablement techniques available might help accelerate capabilities\enhancements to market. If we chose to use this language 'toolkit' as a whole, which can be used for 'intranet' and I\S solutions as well, it might minimize the technological frustrations of today. Any thoughts? Eilish McCaffrey