The folks on this list don't run the net. They just operate the equipment that runs one of the private networks that forms a portion of the Internet. They don't necessarily even make all of the policy decisions for that one network that they do operate. This is a plumbers list, not the municipal water board list.

I had settled more or less in to a state of blissfull funk, but last week I added some equipment to a new exchange point and had to start of the whole process trying to interconnect with other networks again. I have a stack of interconnection agreements about half-a-foot high, supposedly reviewed, approved and signed by lawyers and officers of various companies that represent the policy for exchanging traffic between the various interconnected networks. The only problem, I don't think anyone actually reads the darn things. They certainly don't actually reflect what we (the collective we) do. So we are left passing around the same bad agreements written long before the people who wrote the original agreements had any experience with what they were trying to do. Its not my intent to cause problems, just for the sake of causing problems. I certainly don't want to go through all the blood-letting that happened the last time around. But if no one has any intent of "providing for the notification of the other party of all scheduled maintenance that could cause significant connectivity degradation or loss of connectivity at the Interconnection Point of more than five (5) minutes" why bother with such a paragraph in the agreement signed by the people supposedly setting the policy? When was the last time you actually sent, or received such a notification from a network you interconnect with? And there are other issues have arisin over the years. For example, network address hijacking wasn't an issue in 1991, but does seem to be an issue now. I don't agree with AGIS that what the Net needs is a bunch of lawyers to solve the problems. If a handshake and an e-mail is good enough for you, its likely good enough for me. But I do think if we are going to have policies, we should follow them. And if we are going to document things, they should try to reflect what we actually intend to do. Right now we seem to have the worst of all possible states. Yes, this is a plumber's list. But even plumbers have been known to write to the the plumbing standards boards and say "Things have changed."

They're probably wondering why those plumbers don't solve the problem with a piece of lead pipe. Of course they fail to realize that most of the plumbers are wearing earplugs and are wondering what all the fuss is about.

Then the building inspector shows up. But you don't want to go there. -- Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO Affiliation given for identification not representation