God I love this country. :) What? You want access to your personal property? Too bad, the SS, I mean Secret Service says "Nein!". D At 11:24 PM 4/19/99 -0500, Sean Donelan wrote:

Those ISPs without equipment in Washington DC may not be aware of it, but from April 23-25 the city will be a bit chaotic. The NATO meeting will have 42 ministerial delegations in town on those dates.

What's this got to do with ISPs? Hopefully not much. However, its been a bit difficult getting accurate information from the US Secret Service about exactly what streets will be closed, and precisely which areas of the city will be in the exclusion zone. For example, it is unclear whether we will be able to enter a building that faces a closed street. Several major Internet circuits and facilities happen to run through and adjacent to these zones.

A backhoe incident is unlikely. However, many facilities will be running unattended. It may not be possible for us or other ISPs to get into the area or our facilities at 3am to reboot routers. Please have patience, if they go down, we will get them back up as soon as we can. I may have a bit of trouble trying to explain why a person with a Missouri driver's license needs to get into the area.

If you are not familiar with Washington, DC; Mae-east is located well away from the excitement and should be unaffected. However, other ISPs may also have equipment in the central part of the district, and may have similar problems to us. -- Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO Affiliation given for identification not representation