HI Philip: thanx a bunch for the info..looks like ther was a lot I didn't know..but the chicher was them to furnish internet service, ha..at best that's a proxy service..AOL is a proxy..and not a real ISP..and they are losing their butt..they get the nubies, for a little while..and do more harm than good..some people who hook into AOL..think what !..this is what all the noise is about..and never come back to see what a real ISP does..heck I get unlimited hours disk space for a home page, mail , news , ppp, and a shell account to play with unix..all for 19.95 a month..and I'v heard of some prices lower than that..I also maintaine an account at the local collage..I use it for mail mostly..and as a back up, sometimes modems can be busy,,but also it gives me two different up links into the backbone, if bandwith gets crowded on one uplink , and things slow down, I can go to the other one..in time all the Proxy servers will be history, they are jus to slow to begin with. JIM |