This is a blind message. I don't even know if it's getting out of my mail hub. Theoretically, it should. You won't be able to reply. I can route out, but nothing can get back in. Some of you may remember a poster of this huge eagle stooping on a mouse. The mouse was calmly standing, facing the eagle, flipping it the bird. The title was "Defiance". Covad is the eagle, MHSC is the mouse, and this message is the bird. MHSC has been down since 7Feb01 and Covad is the culprit. MHSC pays its bills, but Covad had a problem with my upstream. On Wednesday, 7Feb01, Covad cut off all links and feeds to my upstream. I've been down ever since. Everyone knows how quickly telcos turn up services, that's why co-lo centers have customers. Covad cut off MHSC access, without warning, without, compansation, and their SafetyNet program is the worst joke. I have a /24 and the new ISPs, that Covad is forcing me to use, can't assign a new /24. Shit, one of them can't even assign one static address. The one that this is going out thru tis trying to convince me that I can run 62 computers, using 130 IP addrs, on a /27 <heh>. We talked earlier about how non-portable addresses suck. Here is the reason why. I either use one of their SafetyNet providers or suffer up to 45 days of outage. Two weeks of warning and I would have been able to avoid the outage. (BTW, my ISDN backup feed is dead as well). I've tried contacting Covad, thier executive staff, etc. No joy there, Covad doesn't care. 100% of MHSC business is directly dependent on our Internet feed. 100% of February revenue is gone. I had two product roll-outs that were scheduled for the following week. Both are now dead issues. MHSC does CA for some of it's customers, renumbering invalidates all those CAs. Every lead we were working is now gone, probably forever, and so are many existing customers. I'm looking at probable business failure. MHSC could sue, but may not survive long enough to collect, even if we win. If MHSC survives this then "Damn, I good!" I urge everyone, do not; 1) Recommend Covad as a DSL provider 2) Become a Covad partner. 3) Remain on Covad service, find someone else (Rythyms sound good) Further, if you have any Covad stock ... sell it. The simple reason is that Covad has shown themselves unworthy of trust. They will cut off service arbitrarily, without direct cause, without compansation or recourse, and without warning. This is NOT the sort of behavior desired from an outfit in charge of your key infrastructure. We are not large, MHSC cannot afford an $80K+ revenue hit, and that's not counting the suits for failure to meet SLA. At this point, I'm not worried about any Covad law suits. What are they going to do ... put MHSC out of business? They've already taken care of that. I hope that this comes to the attention of Covad and I hope that they don't like it! MHSC will also be filing complaints with the CA-PUC and everywhere else that we can. But, a four-year process will not help MHSC stay in business. MHSC is already preparing a Marketing Communication plan to get this story out. MHSC tried dealing with this peacfully and got ignored, by Covad. Covad needs to be shunned by the rest of the Internet community, as a bad net-citizen. MHSC wasn't the ony business effected. There were 800 other busnesses involved in the cut off, that we know of. If any of you know anyone else that has been effected by this outage, please let me know. -- ROELAND M.J. MEYER Managing Director Morgan Hill Software Company, Inc. TEL: +001 925 373 3954 FAX: +001 925 373 9781 http://www.mhsc.com mailto: rmeyer@mhsc.com