[eleusive]

I know of one interesting story here. Early on in (what would eventually become a very successful) tech company's life, they acquired some collocated space for free thanks to a friend (call him Brad) of an early employee.

Eventually Brad left that particular DC operator, leaving the startup with no inside contact - but the servers stayed up for years to come (and the company was never charged for the resources).

These machines were eventually "replaced" with newer hardware in a nearby facility, but the DC operator has no idea where these old machines are physically located within the facility (thus cannot remove them), so they remain active to this very day, sitting idly by...

[jon-wood]

If its in a DC can't they track down the MAC of whatever is responding to their IP, and then trace it to a switch port?