[c-nsp] SLAs on a Gigabit Ethernet link

[Bill Wichers]

>> Perhaps this is asking a lot, but if anyone is able to point me in the
> right
>> direction or provide some good summary answers, I'd be grateful.
>>
>> I need to generate a Service Level Agreement for a customer that we're
> going
>> to be providing a point-to-point link for. On either end of the link
>> will
[snip]

One recommendation: write into your SLA somewhere that only YOUR
measurement is valid to determine upness/downess/bandwidth for the
purposes of the contract. I've had lots of customers want credits when the
problem is either their own machine or they're using some tool that they
don't understand (for example, PingPlotter on Windows has caused lots of
headaches since most users don't know how to interpret the results).

For our SLA, we measure between devices within our network and monitor
only to the edge. We sometimes will watch a customer's port for link (to
call them if we see problems on their side), but any guaranty that watches
a customer-controlled device is asking for trouble.

We issue credits if packet loss exceeds a certain amount over a certain
period of time, and/or if there is an outage. I'm not sure how you could
ensure a specific amount of bandwidth is always available... For our
links, everything is on fiber so it's not an issue, but I know some of the
radios are adaptive and can fluctuate so maybe you'll need to mention
something about the status of the radio in your SLA in addition to the
link itself.

     -Bill


*****************************
Waveform Technology
Systems Engineer