Jeff Ogden wrote:

I don't think you can look at bandwidth without also looking at cost. If the cost for an OC-3 is less than the cost for two DS3s, ...

Then you can just put sync muxes at ends and get three clearline DS-3s. Still beats ATM over OC-3. (Of course, RFC-1916 is better). The pricing on ATM transport is merely an artefact of "pilot" status of ATM networks. Carriers lose money on that. When market will be established the prices are bound to rise to that of native IP transport, or, likely, more (as ATM does not handle levels of overcommitment found in IP backbones now). IP transport also tends to be overpriced, as revenues are used to sustain constant build-up (as opposed to capital investments used to build FR and ATM networks). That silly kind of accounting (when growth costs are counted as operational expenses in IP service) is what i was rallying against in Sprint for quite a time (that's being fixed, or so i told, now). --vadim