When how do non-telco ISPs connect to the last mile. Do they lease equipment at the telco or does all the last-mile traffic get sent on a fat pipe to the ISP from the CO. I guess I'm just wondering how its possible for anyone who isn't a telco to be competative in the ISP market (or isn't it :-) ). I was recently pricing out DS1 and DS3 links from Onvoy, Sprint, and Qwest and I was shocked at the prices. DS3s may be 30x faster than DS1s but they are also 30x the price! $30k - 35k/mo! I always thought that links got cheaper per bandwidth as they went up. So if its $35k / mo for 45Mbps how can kernel.org, slackware.com, ... afford to have dedicated 100 and 155Mbps links when they're non-profit. If prices remain linear someones paying $100-150k / mo! Who's footin' the bill? -- Marc A. Ohmann Digital Solutions, Inc http://ds6.net marc at ds6.net