This suggests, that IF YOU COULD TRUST IT, a single remailer would be just as good as a whole net. If you could trust it and if it were large enough. There's scaling reasons to use multiple remailers as well. Consider a network of mailers running on a private network with link encryptors. Whenever you join two nodes with a full-time link encryptor you remove the information about message arrival and departure, which is to say that you remove all the remaining information not already removed by encryption and reordering. In other words, two remailers (physical) hooked up with link encryptors are almost the _same_ remailer for purposes of traffic analysis, and almost only because of the link latency and relative bandwidth. Likewise, multiple remailers hooked up with link encryptors all collapse to the same node for traffic analysis. Open links between two remailers which are connected otherwise by a path of encrypted links turn into an edge from the collapsed remailer set back onto itself. Simulating any of the salient features of a link encryptor over the Internet is an interesting exercise, particularly in regard to price negotiation with your service provider. Eric