NETOPS PLANNING: april 23-25 in Washington DC

Tue Apr 20 04:24:58 UTC 1999

Those ISPs without equipment in Washington DC may not be aware of it,
but from April 23-25 the city will be a bit chaotic.  The NATO meeting
will have 42 ministerial delegations in town on those dates.

What's this got to do with ISPs?  Hopefully not much.  However, its
been a bit difficult getting accurate information from the US Secret
Service about exactly what streets will be closed, and precisely which
areas of the city will be in the exclusion zone.  For example, it is
unclear whether we will be able to enter a building that faces a closed
street.  Several major Internet circuits and facilities happen to run
through and adjacent to these zones.

A backhoe incident is unlikely.  However, many facilities will be running
unattended.  It may not be possible for us or other ISPs to get into the
area or our facilities at 3am to reboot routers.  Please have patience,
if they go down, we will get them back up as soon as we can.  I may have
a bit of trouble trying to explain why a person with a Missouri driver's
license needs to get into the area.

If you are not familiar with Washington, DC; Mae-east is located well
away from the excitement and should be unaffected.  However, other ISPs
may also have equipment in the central part of the district, and may have
similar problems to us.
-- 
Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO
  Affiliation given for identification not representation