To move IP packets, it will always be faster without ATM than with ATM at any given linerate. The rest is pricebstructure, tarrifs, politics and marketing.

yes ... and, possibly, additional functionality. Normal clearpath services (esp. international) do not offer substantially redundant routing, whereas this is often available on ATM. Also use of one physical i/fs for multiple logical links with aggregation (i.e. w/o time slicing) - i.e. the advantages of FR. I find it odd that telcos are happy-ish to offer ATM internationally but not FR at >2Mb/s though FR has less overhead than ATM - anything to do with the fact telcos would encapsulate this in ATM anyway and take the hit themselves? But basically, yes its a bps (IP) per buck argument for PtP links. Alex Bligh Xara Networks