Maybe its just me, but my brother-in-law and I used to wonder why most of AT&T's cable traffic routed thru the east coast before going out west (or asia). This would have been well within the range they decided to setup camp. early 2002 thru 2003 (maybe 2004). On the MOT backbone traffic was routed normally, yet at-home it took extra routes. Tracert after tracert from within att's net, would mention long routes. It would bounce 3 or 4 times go out the chicago trunk then end up on some cia, or other federal line, then go back (but this time around chicago) and end in cali. If our destination was Japan, or Siberia, the chat latency was unbearable. I was glad when comcast took over, but then again maybe all this humdrum was removed from the line (tracesrt's). Him and I were aware of the echelon systems way before the public had, and of course were riduled as being paranoids or were those arkanoids...lol...Heck for fun were had carnivore installed on everything, though my favorite plugin was "Carnivore is sorry!" Everytime, him and I are talking with friends or associates who bring up the nsa this, or the fbi is spying, we just laugh, because we look at them and say, "and this suprises you how? hmm, funny I seem to remember mentioning this a long time ago, and you thought I was a crackpot!" Then we just look at them, deny what they are saying..."I'm sure I don't know what you are talking about." or "Maybe you should see a doctor about your recent flares of paranoia's, the US government doesn't get involved in domestic espionage, especially since we do our best to vote in all these fantastic "TOP" officials" If you ask me, someone is laughing all the way down the data pipe, and maybe maniacally too...hehe -- -G "The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss." "He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it." "He inched his way up the corridor as if he would rather be yarding his way down it..." "We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!" "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." Famous Quotes written by Douglas Adams, (British comic writer, 1952-2001) http://hitchhikers.movies.go.com/