EXAMPLE 3 (Broken Links)

Some links between remailers are broken,
 and knowledge of such mishap is essential to reliable remailing
The number of remailers is now ~50
  and the number of problems (all other things considere equal)
  grows with the square of that number
On top, the proportion of such problem is growing
  (GNU/PGP incompatibilities, ORBS...)

Chain statistics involve *thousands* of messages to be sent for each type of chain,
  and all chains are not covered.
Reliable built-in stats provides *some* of these chains... every 12 days

Some remops post messages to remops list or apas,
  reporting problems with their immediate neighbour
Such messages are largely unlistened to by the pingers

No pinger I know of (Frog is no better than other) has an updated list of broken links.

While, again, such information would be essebntial for reliability.