Perhaps it might be helpful to read how some folks on the outside view the state of the Internet industry. http://www.ncs.gov/n5_hp/Information_Assurance/PSN-A97.htm Just for grins the President's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Comittee has established a working group on Internet outages. You all did get your invitiations, didn't you? http://www.ncs.gov/n5_hp/Information_Assurance/IO.htm A person asked my how I define 'tiny tykes.' Let me ask a hypothetical question. Do you think I could get 100 ISPs to sign up for this? Each contribute $25,000/annually to establish a out-of-band communication system between all the participating network operation centers. This may simply be a 'bat' phone with a really obnoxious ringer in the middle of their NOC connected via nationwide system which doesn't rely on IP, ATM, or SS7 to enable the NOCs coordinate/communicate when everything else goes to hell. In a previous life I knew this as a 'squawk box' which traders used worldwide. There have already been cases (plural, more than one) where you could not reach a provider's NOC because they obtained their 1-800 service from the same network provider supplying their network facilities, and the same event took out both. -- Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO Affiliation given for identification not representation