The first meeting of NRIC V will take place Monday March 20from 10:00am to 12:30pm at the Federal Communications Commission, 445 12th Street, SW, Room TW-C305, Washington, DC. Frequently there are real audio feeds of these things. NRIC V's Charter is now online at http://www.nric.org/charter_v.html Please note the following from the charter: -- QUOTE -- 2. Network Reliability. (a) The Committee will evaluate, and report on, the reliability of public telecommunications network services in the United States, including the reliability of packet switched networks. . . . . . (c) During the charter of the previous Committee, interested participants recommended that the FCC adopt a voluntary reporting program, administered by the National Communications System, to gather outage data for those telecommunications and information [Internet] service providers not currently required to report outages. The Committee will monitor this process, analyze the data obtained from the voluntary trial and report on the efficacy of that process, as well as the on-going reliability of such services. -- END QUOTE -- Note that "telecommunications" means telephone network. But the line between telephone and Internet networks is blurred, particularly when you talk about packet-switched network reliability. Apparently IOPS was involved in NRIC IV and was in favor of a voluntary period of network outage reporting by ISPs to the FCC's NRIC. ______________________________________________ FREE Personalized Email at Mail.com Sign up at http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup