dispatch well maybe jabber can already do that ? it is a special instance that receive packets and send them on a farm of server according to a special policy (random, greedy , round robin). it allows you for example to launch many yahoo transport on different machine (so you are not limited by yahoo server which may limit connexions per ip). it s all transparent for user, it just keeps internally track of your session, you just talk to everyone@yahoo and receive response from everyone@yahoo. more info : rod@idealx.com