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While there is no difference from a technology perspective, there's also no benefit to be gained by interconnecting large networks at a public (as opposed to private) interconnects.

Sure there is. Running one larger interconnect has the potential to be much less expensive and easier to run than many smaller ones. Economy of scale...

unless, you happen to be one of the major networks, and there are a hundred people each feeding you say, 5M, and all of the sudden you have to deal with 500M over one link/fddi port. Also, just to play devil's advocate, just what exactly is the definition of "peer"? Who is a peer to who? Is network A (with 200 routes) a peer to Network B (with 15,000 routes)? Chris