The oldest and largest NOC contact drill is back. For the next week I will attempt to use the telephone number provided by each NOC to contact that provider. With the number of ISPs involved, it usually takes me about three days to call all of them, assuming something doesn't go wrong. All calls should be during normal USA business hours, so after-hour contacts won't be verified. Sometimes I make a mistake, and get the time zone of the ISP wrong, my apologies if that happens. I also try to check there are no major Internet outages in progress before calling so I didn't interrupt extreme NOC chaos. But again, I may make a mistake and call at the same time as a major outage. Again, my apologies. Let me know you are dealing with a crisis and I'll re-schedule the calls for later. In the script I use, I identify myself, identify DRA, and ask to confirm the telephone number, including a non-1-800/888/877 number, and e-mail address of the ISP's network operation center. In today's world of fancy phone switches, I always tell them what number I called. I've found many NOC's are unaware of what numbers are used to reach them, or when they change. Its amazing how often the person says "You must have called the right number because you reached us." And when I tell him what number I actually dialed, he has no idea how I reached their NOC using it. Everything from area code changes to companies merging NOCs and temporarily forwarding old NOC phone numbers happen. This seems especially bad for those ISPs being merged into Telcos. Telcos tend to have the worst problem with 'special' phone numbers for their NOCs which don't work outside their service area or even the country. But the problem does affect everyone to some degree. Voice-mail systems are a special case. I attempt to choose the 'obvious' prompts. But I'm often stymied by systems which require special codes before allowing contact with any human. If I can't figure the system out in less than five minutes I move on to the next provider. If necessary I explained what a network operations center is, or ask who I should call to report a network problem. I don't require access to the network engineering staff. A customer service person is Ok as long as they can confirm the correct telephone number for reporting network problems and e-mail address for the NOC. You are welcome to inform your network operators or customer service reps I may be calling. However, in the past I've found this doesn't help much. Corporate culture tends to overwhelm those efforts. As usual I will only identify those ISPs which I was able to confirm the contact information worked. [I wonder if I should identify those I can't successfully reach, since it seems to be the same four or five ISPs every time.] If you want to, you can consider this part of a Y2K contingency test. Even though I think having good contact information is needed all year long, and worrying about contingency planning for only one night misses the point. -- Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO Affiliation given for identification not representation