I'd like to make a suggestion to everyone that is at MFS Mae-West, and serious about the long term viability of the exchange points: Get a connection at NASA AMES. We've been at NASA AMES for a while now, with an alternate connection at MFS. During that time, we've seen over 10 different problems at MFS, but never at NASA. There are a few providers with connections at both sides--ourselves, UUNET, MCI and now Above.NET. The pricing is cheaper, the people are just as responsive (if not more), the head of line blocking is less dramatic, etc. This is something that Bill Manning has been preaching for a while. I'm glad we headed his advice a year ago and did the smart thing. During this outage, our MFS side has been toast, but our connectivity to NASA, Sprint, CRL, etc. has been excellent on the NASA AMES side. Reply back to Lance if your interested. I'm sure he can direct you to the appropriate people at NASA/Fix-West. Robert Bowman Exodus Communications Inc. rob@exodus.net

I was told that a contractor tripped the main breaker and the UPS's ran down so that Gigaswitch-01 on the MFS side no longer had power.

Since the 4 OC-3c's that link MFS and Ames are on that switch, connectivity has been lost until MFS can restore power. Folks on the Ames side can still talk to each other-but that's about it.

-Lance-