Definition for "unattended operation"

Sean Donelan SEAN at SDG.DRA.COM
Sun Feb 28 12:31:25 UTC 1999


Although some companies claim to "man" their POPs or NOCs 24 hours a day,
seven days a week; I've found other industries have run into some problems
with the definition of "unattended operation."  It may not be in the
Oxford English Dictionary, but it does show up in some safety standards
and government regulations.

Unattended Operation - A procedure or operation at which there is no
person present who is knowledgeable regarding the operation and
emergency shutdown procedures.

Just having a warm body present isn't enough to claim an attended
operation from a safety or government regulation perspective.  And
I suspect also from a network operations perspective.

As far as listing additional contact information in the WHOIS database.
I encourage providers to exchange contact information for the person(s)
who is knowledgeable about the process and emergency shutdown
procedures.  However, I am beginning to think the WHOIS database
operated by NSI no longer best serves the network operation community.
I see little purpose in adding additional fields to a database which
is so full of useless information already.  Listing good contact
information just results in those contacts becoming overwhelmed by
spammers, vigilantes and UUNET telemarketing.  The occasional
appropriate message is likely to be lost, or not acted upon because
of contact fatigue.
-- 
Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO
  Affiliation given for identification not representation




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