Who are you gonna call?

Dan Foster dsf at frontiernet.net
Tue Jun 29 06:05:09 UTC 1999


Hot Diggety! On a bright and sunny day, Sean Donelan was rumored to have said...
> 
> Here was my list:
> 
>    - Cisco TAC (Have you paid your IOS service contract yet?)
>    - MFS (MAE-East tech on duty)
>    - Merit (Route Server, Gated)
>    - Internet Software Consortium (Have you paid your BIND service
>         contract yet?)
>    - UUNET NOC (if the 800lbs ISP falls over, we're all going to feel it)
>    - Sendmail, Inc (after TCP/IP, mail is something all NOC's depend on)
>    - Sun Microsystems (for those not running Linux)
>    - ARIN (assuming APNIC and RIPE are mirrored)
>    - My home phone (Family is important too)
> 
> I went through my old tickets, and besides telephone repair, its remarkable
> how infrequently most of the Internet stuff we depend on breaks.  So I
> based my list not on how likely something would break, but on how bad it
> would be if it did break.
> 
> Nothing may happen, but assuming such a list affected the setting of
> priorities, any changes to my list and why?

You asked :-)

I could eliminate several of those items on the list by having one or
two *really* clueful senior systems administrator-type people to handle
the BIND, Sendmail, and OS specific stuff around on that evening; with
source available, or a lot of clue, they can usually hack together pretty
much any solution imaginable. (even including date changes to delay things
to buy time to contact support people if absolutely necessary. Fails with
embedded systems, though. Unless good with EEPROM programmers and reverse
engineering...)

I might also include MERIT on the list of software for system admins and
network admins, as well.

Per definition, it doesn't rearrange any priorities per se; just clears
up space to put other worthy items on the list.

Folks might want to also check contracts regarding support responses.

Best single Y2K move? Don't have your top tech folks party that night, so
they're in some condition to take the Y2K calls starting at midnight :-)

If all else fails...call Ghostbusters :-) Perhaps they handle the ghosts
of Y2K ;-)

-Dan




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