L2 switches are available today that reliably receive OC-12 SONET circuits.

These can be disaggregated into OC3 ATM pipes that can be fed into many routers with proven technology and reliability. Granted, the disproportionality of the edge ckts to the backbone ckts provides for interesting flow aggregation dynamics, but it does work.

Your disdain for ATM does not stop its existence and use by the larger NSPs.

Just think, there are people out there "throwing away" an oc-3 worth of bandwidth to IP over ATM overhead. Must be nice to live in a world of capitalization where one could do such a thing. We use ATM for two reasons, 1) it's still significantly cheaper than long-haul circuits of the same capacity, 2) it provides some interesting abilites that are only now beginning to show up in the mainstream IP hardware. -- additional commentary by yours truly removed by BS filter -- - Chris