Are there any good places a service-network could donate resources (bandwidth/servers/routing tables/what have you/etc) to for-the-good-of-the-net projects?

This sort of thing used to be quite a bit more prevalent and I wanted to know if there are any clear needs in this area.

Hello Deepak, The Network Startup Resource Center project (www.nsrc.org), based at the University of Oregon, has been coordinating donations of networking hardware/infrastructure to relay to networks in developing areas around the world for the past decade or so. Cisco has provided lots of routers and switches over the years, and various other vendors, ISPs and university networks have contributed equipment (switches, routers, servers, wireless APs, spare parts, etc.) that NSRC relays directly to networks we're working with in Asia/Pacific, Africa, Latin America... Thanks to the National Science Foundation, the O'Reilly Foundation, and some other project supporters that help cover the international shipping costs, we've facilitated donations of gear and technical books to universities and ISPs in about 70 different countries. Stuff gets deployed and put to use right way, and there are clearly more needs in this area. If you'd like to follow up on that sort of thing (or anyone else), let me know, or drop a note to nsrc@nsrc.org. Steve Huter Network Startup Resource Center (NSRC) University of Oregon http://www.nsrc.org/