This may have been hashed out in a previous incarnation, but on the subject of remailers and their availability, why not just have each one broadcast a message of it's availability periodically (hourly? every 4 hours?) on, say, the Cypherpunks mailing list. Then, each remailer could also listen in, read in who's up, and if it doesn't hear from a remailer within some period of time (or some number of scheduled broadcasts), assume that it's down until it hears from that system again. This would also allow individuals to maintain personal listings of available remailers, as well, and automate the process of keeping track of what remailers are up/down/available. The additional traffic wouldn't seem to be _too_ much of a burden, those individuals who didn't want the broadcasts cluttering up their mailboxes could filter them out, and doesn't require massive effort or changes to implement (ie, new newsgroups, etc). What blazingly obvious thing am I missing here, or does it make too much sense to work? :-) Dave Merriman Finger merriman@metronet.com for PGP2.6ui/RIPEM public keys/fingerprints.