We are approaching the last weeks of the NSFNET Backbone Service. Despite good intentions, only seven (7) organizations have completely severed their relationship with the NSFNET Backbone service. Those seven (7) are: Argonne National Laboratory CA*net Cornell Supercomputer Center DARPA Michnet NYSERnet SURAnet Many other organizations depend on a new service provider and they continue to maintain the NSFNET connectivity for backup purposes. Merit has encouraged organizations who maintain redundant connectivity to voluntarily discontinue connectivity to the NSFNET service in advance of April 30,1995. The reason prompting this request is that it is difficult to identify outstanding reachability issues as long as there are still dependencies on the NSFNET Backbone service. If an organization can confirm reachability to all destinations that are currently reachable, the chances for an uneventful changing of the guard on April 30 increase. To this aim, Merit is encouraging all organizations which will lose direct access to AS 690 on April 30, 1995 to decommission their peering sessions with AS 690 before April 21, 1995. On April 21, 1995 at 09:00 EDT, Merit will terminate peering sessions with all organizations still attached to the NSFNET Backbone service. The goal of this action is to identify where there are pockets of unreachable destinations. At the NSFNET Executive Committee meeting which took place on April 12, 1995, the committee expressed concern over the large amount of traffic still traversing the NSFNET service. Based on this concern, the committee requested that Merit take the actions described in this message. If an organization identifies a reachability problem between April 21 and April 28, it should send a message to merit-ie@merit.edu. We will work with the organization to resolve the problem and will reestablish temporary access to the NSFNET service as necessary. On April 28, 1995, all sessions with the NSFNET service will be permanently terminated and ANS will terminate operation of the NSFNET Backbone service on April 30, 1995. The following locations where access to the NSFNET service is provided will be impacted by this discontinuation of service on April 21, 1995: Ann Arbor, MI Argonne, IL Boston, MA Boulder, CO Champaign, IL College Park, MD (FIX-East) Houston, TX Ithaca, NY Lincoln, NE Palo Alto, CA Pittsburgh, PA Princeton, NJ Salt Lake City, UT Seattle, WA San Diego, CA Please send any questions regarding this plan to merit-ie@merit.edu. Thank you. --Elise Gerich Manager, Internet Engineers Merit Network Inc.