TS> a huge number.  I've heard horror stories of international
 TS> polls repeatedly failing,

yep, my most recent phone bill has $25US of failed connects to a system in
sweden. i had to change my mailer to use FTS-6 to get thru cleanly. yes,
the systems were connecting and sttempting to talk but something just
wasn't quite right. forcing FTS-6 worked. an "expensive" lesson
to say the least ;-(

)\/(ark