you've been around long enough to know the drill, you call your upstream, he calls his, etc., etc., you expect our front line noc to know you by name? things weren't always this way of course, just like rfc 1104, information goes out of date :-).
If you've been around long enough, you remember the days when the MCI NOC used to flat-out refuse to do inter-provider referals.
From first-hand experience, I know they've told their customers to call the other provider directly, even when both networks involved were direct MCI customers. MCI has improved this particular mis-feature. In the last month or so, we've successfully received our first inter-provider referals through the MCI NOC.
On the other hand, after two years our MCI salesperson(s) still hasn't told us the officially supported way of reporting a problem to InternetMCI. But I have accumulated a large collection of 1-800 numbers that I can use to call people I know by name :-). I prefer to go through channels, but when the channels don't work, I'm just as comfortable using any means necessary. -- Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO Affiliation given for identification not representation