Many organizations refuse to open tickets for arbitary third parties because otherwise one risks doing the support for ones more slovenly downstreams' customers. Given over 90% of NOC calls are not issues the NOC can or should handle, placing some form of limit on resource given to unknown third parties is normally a useful way of ensuring your customers get better service. I guess argues for the 'hop-by-hop' methodology of interprovider cooperation and problem resolution. However, given there are some NOC's who won't open a trouble ticket for *peers*, or (sometimes amusingly) for *upstreams*, perhaps this is a broken metaphor. Bypass on first-line clue detection is useful. We find 'I am calling from ASnnnn' works well, especially when the NOC response goes 'Q: what's an AS? A: Ask your supervisor'. -- Alex Bligh VP Core Network, Concentric Network Corporation (formerly GX Networks, Xara Networks)