Of course with the "one big box" design, even if you design it to so-called "telco-quality" standards you still have the problem of loosing a lot when the "big box" goes down. Someone pointed out to me that last night seven Missouri counties lost 9-1-1 service and long-distance service for over four hours (and a plane crashed, but that was unrelated). Southwestern Bell reports an 'unknown party' cut a fiber optic cable in Lake St. Louis (just west of St. Louis) around 2pm CDT yesterday. Cell phones, pagers, 800 numbers were out of service from about Jefferson City to Lake St. Louis. If you had a direct T1 to an IXC you could call long-distance, but Equal Access dialing was down. The 'unknown party' just happened to sever the fiber optic link for the main access tandem for the central(westphalia) LATA in Missouri. When you lose an access tandem in the telephone network, things don't work so good. -- Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO Affiliation given for identification not representation