thanks to all the folks who responded to me with the answer to this.. 11 people responded, you all gave me the same answer, just spelled many different ways<<g> here is the command that fixed the problem Try having the customer put in a neighbor command like this: neighbor xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx dont-capability-negotiate Its an undocumented command set... once again, thanks to the folks who responded.. i owe ya a drink sometime. *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* | Harold Willison AGIS Network Engineering | * Senior Network Engineer 313-730-5151 * | noc@agis.net 313-730-1130 x-5649 | | harold@agis.net 24 hours a day, 7 days a week | | <bold><italic> <underline>http://www.agis.net</underline></italic></bold> |<bold><italic> </italic></bold>\*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*/