Conspiracy theorists beware. Doesn't "...equipment that routes data over it's network" sure sounds like a router to me. Actually, the AP article does go onto to identify the source of the problem as a "problematic router". Via The Mercury News (obnoxious, but free, registration required), reports: [snip] Subscribers to AT&T Corp.'s DSL Internet service in several Western states lost their connections for several hours Thursday after the telecommunications company experienced a problem with equipment that routes data over its network. The service went down about before 7 a.m. PDT, and some customers were being restored about four hours later, said AT&T spokesman Andy Backover. The company confirmed homes and businesses in California and "a couple other Western states" were affected, but it would not confirm the total number of subscribers who lost service. Backover said AT&T has received about 1,000 reports of trouble. "We're working as hard as we can to restore the service," he said. "We're very apologetic to any customers who were inconvenienced." Backover added the problem stemmed from a problematic router that's been identified and was being repaired. But he did not know when all affected customers would be restored. The outage only affected Digital Subscriber Line, or DSL, customers, not the large data network that is maintained by the telecommunications company. [snip] http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/technology/12246752.htm - ferg -- "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/