Each member site of PlanetLab Europe receives some slices in exchange for two machines running the PlanetLab node software. Machines can stop for all sorts of reasons

• Power loss
• Kernel crashes
• Network disconnection

Monitor periodically checks the status of the machines at your site.

If a machine is down for longer, Monitor will send a message to the Technical Contact at your site, within a week. If we don't hear back from someone acknowledging that they'll look into the problem and the total number of running machines at your site drops below two for longer than two weeks, then we will contact the Principal Investigator at your site to solve the problem. PlanetLab Europe will also turn off your sites slice creation rights. As a result, no new slices can be created, but the existing slices will continue running on PlanetLab Europe uninterrupted.

If we still don't hear from either the Tech Contact or PI after three weeks, then all slice users will be emailed and all slices on PlanetLab Europe will be disabled.

The idea is that anyone actually benefitting from PlanetLab Europe will have some added incentive to get the machines back up and running. If we continue to not hear from anyone, then periodic emails will be sent after this to remind everyone about the situation.