NRIC IV held their final meeting of 1999 on October 14. A couple of topics related to the Internet and ISPs were discussed. Am I still allowed to make fun of phone companies? Focus Group #1 - Finding #1 ISP interoperability with Internet Backbone Networks - Gather and analyze information on interoperability testing plans. This "gap" was identified by the NRIC testing subcomittee and reported to the President's council on Y2K at the NSTAC meeting in June. The President's Council will pursue ISP interoperability with the NSF and other agencies. Status: interoperability testing now planned between a large ISP and a major Internet backbone provider. Has anyone heard about this, or who the ISP and backbone provider involved are? There are several Y2K interoperability projects going on between NSPs, ISPs, IAPs, WHPs, and the rest of the TLA alphabet. However most are being down under NDA's. So, unlike phone power banking etc, not much about the Internet testing has been reported publically. Focus Group #3 A voluntary trial is recommended with the participation by service providers of [...] and ISPs to alert NCS/NCC of "widespread outages" that have significant public impact. The reporting criteria for ISPs: A failure that would cause a loss of service to a large number of customers for 30 minutes or more. Example: A Domain Name Server (DNS) failure Schedule Nov 23 Report posted on FCC site for comments Nov 23-Dec 7 Public comment period Dec 7 Comment period closed Dec 15 Revisions completed Dec 16 Final Report by the FCC Just in time for Dec 31/Jan 1, as if you didn't already have enough to worry about. Will you be ready for "voluntary" reporting to the NCS/NCC?