On 3/28/2003 at 16:19:03 -0500, Sean Donelan said:

On Fri, 28 Mar 2003, Dave Israel wrote:

...

I seriously doubt that, if a 12-year-old from Nebraska called the NOC at AT&T and asked for a list of all their network failures in the past two years, the NOC person would feel obliged to spend their time on

I try to point out when providers are doing a good job.

AT&T has set up their system so their NOC people don't have to get bogged down answering phones. AT&T has a very nice news system where you can read about network issues. AT&T's customer care people post regular updates about POP problems, circuits down, etc. I suppose if the 12-year old from Nebraska archived the news system for two years, he could read about all their network issues.

That may be true. However, we weren't talking about network outage notifications in general, we were talking specifically about calling our NOCC to ask about an outage. No, it isn't apples to oranges, but it is Red Deliciouses to Granny Smiths. ;-)

While there is always room for improvement, and some providers have goofed up, there are providers who attempt to keep their network users (even if they aren't direct customers) informed.

And if you're a network operator who is flinging packets across our network and they aren't arriving, and you want to know why, that generally fits the descripton of "good reason," in my book. I'll admit, it isn't perfect. As somebody else pointed out, "good reason" is not an easy metric; it depends on who you are, who you have reached, the nature of the outage, how busy the NOCC is, the phase of the moon, etc, etc. -Dave