From: briand@fonorola.net (Brian Dickson) I do wish you'd feel free to ask us these sorts of questions directly. We're more than happy to provide you with an explanation, and an honest answer based on the facts will go a lot farther towards providing you with a solution, than open speculation on a mailing list.

You cut off his excellent rationale, which was (Quoting Matt Harrop): # before I start butting heads with their # management, I want to be sure of the technical issues. Now, here is exactly what you ought to desire -- an informed customer. Yet, you publically castigate him for asking a mailing list which deals with _exactly_ these technical issues.

Frankly, it is this sort of unenlightened, baseless opinion that gives Usenet its deserved reputation. It certainly doesn't reflect the level of professionalism that a reputable NSP should display, on this list in particular.

This rather surprises me, since I don't believe that this is a Usenet distributed list. My personal reaction was also, "they want you as a captive customer". You say:

... Transit ASes cannot be provided to you at this time on a guarenteed basis. If you use us as default, this is not a problem....

And:

The reason we cannot guarantee transit AS connectivity is a direct result of not being your default connection. If you select us as default, we can guarantee transit access. The particulars behind that are technical;

I surely don't understand what default routing (which would only be outgoing) has to do with your advertisements to other ASs (which would provide him incoming reachability). So, perhaps you can enlighten this technical mailing list? To conclude, this person states that he is a "service provider". Providers _should_ be multiply homed. This is encouraged! Bill.Simpson@um.cc.umich.edu Key fingerprint = 2E 07 23 03 C5 62 70 D3 59 B1 4F 5E 1D C2 C1 A2