Marty, and others:
Yes, the Ascend's are fundenmentally broken, BUT
and this is a big one, there are work arounds for the problems with
Ascend's broken routing protocols, i.e. don't use them, or filter them.
This is easy enough to do.
The problem is more general than Ascend however. There are MANY
boxes out there (terminal servers) who's PPP is broken in this way.
Telebit Netblazers and Livingston Portmasters included.
It's kind of sad, really, when a small company like mine, can make this
work and the "world's largest ISP" can't fix the problem.
It is good to point out that other large ISPs have this same problem.