Speaking of network outages, I wanted to make sure that you were aware of the following. The FCC's Network Reliability and Interoperability Council (NRIC) has recommended a one year trial voluntary period of ISP outage reporting to NRIC. NRIC is a Federal Advisory Council that exists pursuant to the Federal Advisory Council Act to provide advice and information to the Federal Communications Commission. It was set up to look at reliability issues in the public telecommunications network (how to keep the PSTN reliable in the face of hurricanes rolling up the east coast, etc.). NRIC's report recommending ISP outage reporting is suppose to be released today. The following is from the NRIC presentation on October 14 (full presentation available at www.nric.org - Focus Group III - Oct 14 meeting): <QUOTE> Focus Group III PJ Auduskevicz ATT n A voluntary trial is recommended with participation by service providers of CMRS (Commercial Mobile Radio Service), satellite, cable, data networking and ISPs to alert NCS/NCC of "widespread outages" that have significant public impact. n A process for reporting data during the voluntary trial including what report fields need to be populated and time frames for filing reports has been addressed and will be included in the Final Report. n Industry associations should provide an informational notice to their members to inform them of the voluntary outage reporting trial and encourage their participation. n Analysis of the data from the voluntary trial should be done by a neutral party similar to the analysis conducted on wireline carrier segments. u At the completion of the voluntary trial period (minimum 1 year) an evaluation of the effectiveness of the data for usefulness to participants and the FCC should be undertaken. Data to be held confidential (potential FOIA exemption may be needed in order to facilitate participation in the voluntary trial). . . . . . ISPs Alert Situation Criteria: A failure that would cause a loss of service to a large number of customers for 30 minutes or more. Outage examples: A DNS failure Focus Group III will place its proposal online for comments. The comment period proposed is as follows: Reports posted on FCC web site Nov. 23 Comment period for NRIC members Nov. 23 - Dec. 7 Comment period closed Dec. 7 Reports revised as appropriate Dec. 15 Final reports available on FCC web site Dec. 16 </QUOTE> ------Original Message------ From: Sean Donelan <sean@donelan.com> To: <nanog@merit.edu> Sent: November 23, 1999 12:20:05 PM GMT Subject: Majore New Jersey outage...

Just spoke to Bell Atl, major DACS failure in 'newark-2', aka 95 williams st., newark.

This wasn't a good night, two fiber cuts on the east coast, a power failure and a DACs failure. __________________________________________________ FREE Email for ALL! Sign up at http://www.mail.com