Verisign has become the single point of failure for almost all of the USA's public networks (voice, data, Internet, etc).

I seriously don't like this situation, especially considering latest marketing twists with verisign's new "services". What we have however are number of people working there have good technical experience running registry services (i.e. root dns, .com registry, ss7) but their managers who came from verisign itself are not interested in maintaining good level of service for such core services but rather extracting largest amount of money from these services which. If Verisign is to continue operating these core services (root dns, registry, ss7), they will need to be COMPLETELY separate from their other units (domain register) and run them as public trust. Or it may be best if Verisign were forced (by goverment and/or icann agreements) to move these into separate, possibly non-profit company like it was done when Internic (aka NSI) IP registration services were moved to ARIN. -- William Leibzon Elan Networks william@elan.net

I fairly certain the previous poster is talking not-in-service numbers, not busy numbers. Busy number redial is available here in the states, but most places you have to bang a *XX code when you get the busy signal, you don't tend to get any recording for it. Not in service numbers may get the LATA unable to connect or unable to route service depending on if the number you dialed was even in LERG. The system only does that in the even that it actually rang (and ringing in this sense doesn't mean you heard a ring generator on your end). And yes, for the benefit of the others on NANOG, the process is more complicated than that, so lets not start another even further off-topic thread on the TDM/POTS system. And how it routes, or fails to route, calls. --On Saturday, September 20, 2003 6:59 PM -0400 "Vivien M." <vivienm@dyndns.org> wrote:

Just out of curiosity, why did they discontinue it?

Here in Bell Canada land, this type of thing has been around for hm... 8 years or so? There was a big outcry the first week or so from dialup users (at the time, busy signals were more common than now), then eventually they all did the *XX code to permanently disable it. It is still enabled on new [residential, at least] POTS lines.

Vivien -- Vivien M. vivienm@dyndns.org Assistant System Administrator Dynamic DNS Network Services http://www.dyndns.org/

-- Undocumented Features quote of the moment... "It's not the one bullet with your name on it that you have to worry about; it's the twenty thousand-odd rounds labeled `occupant.'" --Murphy's Laws of Combat

On Sun, 21 Sep 2003, Owen DeLong wrote:

That gets even more frightening when you look at the background of Verisign's management team. I'm not usually one to buy into conspiracy theorys, and, I'm not suggesting any evidence supports one here. However, these guys are from the government, and, it's obvious they're not here to help.

Wow, and here comes the Tri-Lateral Commision :( So what if they were former Gov't employees? They were likely culled from the copious numbers of ex-gov't folks in the Washington, DC area. That and they opening some doors via networking and contacts in the DC area for Verisign. I'm not sure that their background has really any bearing in this case. A case where it DID would be them directing ALL domains through a central location for monitoring, which clearly isn't happening here.