I am not going to name names, but I have it on good authority that late this week a large hosting provider went out of business abruptly. So far, the news that it did so has not been discussed anywhere, that I can tell, which is starting to disturb me. There have been some significant dislocations related to this shutdown, obviously, and this sort of event seems to me to be something that involved parties should be at least sending warnings out on nanog or other appropriate discussion lists. I and a third party ISP executive discussed this lack of discussion some yesterday; their opinion is that businesses and ISPs formerly hosted at the now defunct site are loath to admit their connecitvity is down lest their customers defect en masse causing a snowball of business failures, when they will be up and stable via new providers shortly and are not themselves fundamentally unsound. I understand that logic but cannot entirely agree with it. I would like to see the issue discussed in general terms at least; what is appropriate for notifications, what are fair responsibilities to customers, the public, other ISPs etc. in terms of this sort of event. -george william herbert gherbert@crl.com I am not employed by, and do not speak for, CRL.