In message <43571759@um.cc.umich.edu>, Eric.M.Aupperle@um.cc.umich.edu writes: | Sean, | Several regionals have given their notice to NSF and Merit. To date | it's only been possible for Merit to give ANS notice to terminate | one ENSS. That was for ENSS 138 in Atlanta. Merit will soon, before | the end of February, give notice to ANS to terminate all other ENSSs | to meet the end of April deadline. Merit's termination notice will | include ENSSs at the FIXs. Eric Wow, *poof* bye bye NSFNET backbone service. I was wondering, in the interests of federal-agency <--> IRC (MCI), international (PIPEX) and domestic (Alternet, PSI et al.) commercial connectivity, if ANS might somehow be able to negotiate among the federal networks for keeping ENSS145 at FIX-EAST as a level-three backup between FIX-EAST and MAE-EAST+ just in case the level-2 bridging scheme doesn't work very well in practice. ANS is better suited to that than ICM is right now, and I think it would be pragmatic not to have to deal with the issue of east-coast FIX<-->MAE connectivity on an emergency basis. This is probably an FNC thing that NSF/MERIT combination is likely to be best suited to run with, I imagine. Sean. - -- Sean Doran <smd@icp.net> / <smd@sprint.net>