"Jay West" wrote:
 You wrote....
  beg to differ.  The portmaster was not (by any
means) carrier class. 
Sure it was. I was there ;) Debatable, but it certainly was
ubiquitous.
You're confusing your decades - In the day I was referring to, large ISP's
used portmasters, as there was no such thing as a tnt/max at the time, at
least not commonly. 
Well, I respect your opinion, but when I say "large isp" I mean AOL or
UUNet.  I'm talking about isp's with 100's of POPs, not one city.  Ever
been to an interchange like MAE-East?
I never saw a portmaster in use by a large ISP.
and the decade was always 199x :-)
-brad