PW>>> My guess is it's either a firewall or something to go between a
PW>>>highspeed line like a T1 or frac-T1 and a router/hub but dunno
PW>>>for sure.
JH>>Whuzzat?

 PW>  Basically it would be something that goes between the main
 PW> phone system lines and your ethernet setup. T1 and Frac-T1
 PW> (fractional-t1) is something like having 1000 phonelines all
 PW> in a single group. Lots and lots of data carrying capacity,
 PW> like a major business (t1) or a large library (frac-t1) might
 PW> use for inet access.

a T1 line can handle, at most, 24 56k connections... so, if you are an ISP
and you want to be able to allow 50 people to be connected all at one time,
then you will need /three/ T1 lines... this is the local loop for local
callers to access your connection point...

i've never really gotten a good measure of how many can be handled on a T1
backbone feed to the internet... mainly because the traffic is not
"solid"...

no matter what, though, a T1 is a lot of capacity but nothing like the
OC-3, ATM and larger stuff that's out there now days... heck, a T3 is like
24 T1s, IIRC, and by today's standards, its a "little" pipe...

)\/(ark