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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Discussing, or not discussing, major business outages
At 11:06 PM 2/6/99 -0800, George Herbert wrote: [SNIP] >I would like to see the issue discussed in general terms >at least; what is appropriate for notifications, what are >fair responsibilities to customers, the public, other ISPs etc. >in terms of this sort of event. Having gone through this myself (as all of you here probably remember), this can be a Most Difficult Time for everyone involved. Creditors threatening to shut you down, and leaks only exacerbating the problem. Customers worried about loosing their connectivity. Customers worried about loosing their customers. Employees worried about their paychecks - or worse, know there isn't one but trying to keep things going anyway. Etc., etc., etc. It's really the bad side of this business that a lot of people never see - thank god. When a business goes under, the technical contacts of that business should communicate with the technical contacts of the businesses *directly* impacted by the possible failure. The business contacts of that business should communicate with their creditors and customers regarding business issues. Mailing lists and the like should only be notified after no more damage can be done. There really isn't an operational issue here. If a network is off-line, and you are trying to get to a downstream, you should contact the downstream. Just as if the network were having a normal outage, not going out of business. Since the network will have notified the downstream (as per my previous paragraph :), then the downstream can decide what is in their best interests to tell you - IN PRIVATE. Not blasted out onto a mailing list with a few hundred readers. Don't get me wrong, I would really like to know about outages, etc., but I can say from personal experience that "leaking" information can *serious* endanger customers and employees - we're talking about PEOPLE here - that had nothing to do with the failure. Sometimes a day or two can make the difference, and posting to a mailing list only makes vendors want to cut their losses immediately. Ruining some random person's livelihood, someone who has worked hard and does not deserve to be put out of business, because you were pissed at their upstream's NOC guy 6 months ago is bordering on sadistic. (No, I don't know if that's why someone anonymously posted about Priori. And yes, I'm still trying to find out what piece of sadistic shit did that to my [ex]customers. You can insult, backstab and try to bring me down, and all may be forgiven - or at least forgotten. But don't fuck with my friends, because that I will never forget.) So, if a network, hosting house, dial-up shop, or anyone else is going down in flames, I do not think the list should be notified until #1) everyone involved is notified and #2) everyone involved agrees no more harm can be done. (We can discuss an addition to #2 like: "or everyone is shut down and moved" or something like that.) Please note I said "everyone involved", not "everyone on NANOG". Just because you run a network does not mean you are automagically "involved" in the death of someone else's business on the 'Net. All IMHO, of course. ;) >-george william herbert TTFN, patrick I Am Not An Isp www.ianai.net ISPF, The Forum for ISPs by ISPs, <http://www.ispf.com> "Think of it as evolution in action." - Niven & Pournelle
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