AES Broadcast 11/09/2009                     Broadcast # 2009052

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Extended Automated  Export System (AES) Maintenance Outage 
(December 5-6, 2009)

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The AES Production Region (shipments for live data) will undergo an 
extended outage for hours beginning at 11:00 PM Eastern Standard Time 
(EST) Saturday, December 5, 2009. The region will be restored by 
7:00 AM EST Sunday, December 6, 2009. 

During these outages, incoming AES shipments will be stored in a queue 
and once the regions are restored processing will continue and messages 
will be returned to the filers. We strongly encourage you to file your 
shipments prior to these extended outages when possible.
   
The AES Development Team will be implementing a database feature 
called  "Partitioning". Although this feature will be transparent to 
the system's end users, it will facilitate the Database Administrator's 
ability to achieve maximum efficiency during regular database 
maintenance windows.

During this outage all AESDirect program filers may submit shipments 
under the AES Downtime Policy. State Department licensable shipments 
can not be exported under the AES Downtime Policy and must be held 
until the connection is restored and an  Internal Transaction Number 
(ITN) is received. Once the connection is restored, all AESDirect 
program transactions for shipments that were exported under the 
AES Downtime Policy must be filed along with any new AES transactions.

AESPcLink users are encouraged to continue creating and storing 
shipments in a queue on their local computer for transmission when 
AESDirect is brought back on-line.
   
If you utilize the AES  Downtime Policy for export, please contact the 
port where you will export from. In lieu of the AES Proof of Filing 
Citation, please use the AES Downtime citation which consist of the 
phrase AESDOWN, your individual company's Filer ID, followed by the 
date of export. 

For example: AESDOWN 123456789 12/05/2009

Please see the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) web site for 
further information on the AES Downtime Policy:

http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/trade/automated/aes/tech_docs/aestir/june04_intro/

For further information or questions, contact the U.S. Census Bureau's 
AES Branch at 1-800-549-0595, menu option 1 or at [email protected] 
or online at www.census.gov/trade.