I just got of the phone with the evil ones and confirmed that I will have to start smuggling drugs in order to pay for software downloads only with no tech support. The cost of the actual tech support would require more than the profit margin on drug running allows! While on the phone it was noted that something is going to happen on or about May 1 the will significantly affect 3Com RAS customers. I don't know whether it will be good or bad, but when has something good come from this company? They claim they are losing money on support. My response is that if you make a poroduct that is reliable there wouldn't be a support problem. I also indicated that if the support contracts were reasonably priced ( I described my Cisco contracts and the level of support I get) then they wouldn't be losing money. Let's face it, we are professionals. What we need is good code, not a bunch of phone support folks. Sell software support at reasonable price and a lot of folks would buy it. BTW, given the tone of the conversation I don't think there is a chance in the hot place that quads are going to be supported. I got the feeling they are trying to figure out how to not support anything at all, but then they pretty much have that wired now. I am going to contact my equipment rep now and see what the options are going forward, but it doesn't look good. My initial thoughts were that with the cost of DSP's under $2500 and a software contract it didn't make sense to look at the Patton's or others. Patton couldn't give a good enough price to meet the difference. If software support is no longer available then that analysis is no longer valid. I don't really want to take on a new lease for dialup gear but that may be the way to go. Mark Thornton San Marcos Internet, Inc. 512-393-5300 - To unsubscribe to usr-tc, send an email to "majordomo@xmission.com" with "unsubscribe usr-tc" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message.