For the telco, use www.dialpad.com ... it rocks! For the Internet, there are always portions that are not quite working. This will get worse, the larger it gets. I'm a CerfNet down-stream and ATT/Cerf digestion problems have been making me crazy for the past few months (routes going up, down, side-ways, you name it ...). In fact, it's getting to the point that I'm about to start recommending at least three different upstreams to clients (multi-home). The problem with that is that CIDR gets in the way. I plan to take it up, with ICANN/ASO in about a week.

-----Original Message----- From: Alex Bligh [mailto:amb@gxn.net] Sent: Friday, November 03, 2000 7:07 AM To: Sean Donelan Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: If the network is always down, how come I can post a message

Sean,

This is because the phone system is considered down when the subscriber can dial no numbers. The internet is considered down when you can't reach any particular web site (or collection thereof). If people can't reach a given company by phone they say 'their phone line is down'. I have given up counting the number of times I have spent trying to dial the US from the UK and got fast busy (or worse).

-- Alex Bligh VP Core Network, XO Communications - http://www.xo.com/ (formerly Nextlink Inc, Concentric Network Corporation GX Networks, Xara Networks)