
NRIC IV held their final meeting of 1999 on October 14.  A couple of
topics related to the Internet and ISPs were discussed.  Am I still
allowed to make fun of phone companies?

Focus Group #1 - Finding #1

  ISP interoperability with Internet Backbone Networks - Gather and
  analyze information on interoperability testing plans.

  This "gap" was identified by the NRIC testing subcomittee and reported
  to the President's council on Y2K at the NSTAC meeting in June.  The
  President's Council will pursue ISP interoperability with the NSF and
  other agencies.

  Status: interoperability testing now planned between a large ISP
  and a major Internet backbone provider.

Has anyone heard about this, or who the ISP and backbone provider
involved are?

There are several Y2K interoperability projects going on between NSPs,
ISPs, IAPs, WHPs, and the rest of the TLA alphabet.  However most are
being down under NDA's.  So, unlike phone power banking etc, not much about the Internet testing has been reported publically.


Focus Group #3

  A voluntary trial is recommended with the participation by service
  providers of [...] and ISPs to alert NCS/NCC of "widespread outages"
  that have significant public impact.

  The reporting criteria for ISPs:

  A failure that would cause a loss of service to a large number of
  customers for 30 minutes or more.

  Example: A Domain Name Server (DNS) failure

  Schedule

  Nov 23         Report posted on FCC site for comments
  Nov 23-Dec 7   Public comment period
  Dec 7          Comment period closed
  Dec 15         Revisions completed
  Dec 16         Final Report by the FCC

Just in time for Dec 31/Jan 1, as if you didn't already have enough
to worry about.  Will you be ready for "voluntary" reporting to the
NCS/NCC?




