Start-up service provider Arbinet is announcing at Supercomm an Internet access service that connects customers to any of a dozen or so ISPs depending on how well the ISPs' networks are performing.

Called OptimizedIP, the service is intended to give business customers the Internet performance that best meets the needs of their applications and respects the limits of their budgets.

Arbinet connects to multiple ISPs in its point of presence, where it repeatedly checks the performance of every route in their route tables. It uses this data to calculate a score that rates each provider by performance. Customers tell Arbinet what their performance requirements are and the price range they are willing to pay. Arbinet then comes up with a group of ISPs to which it will connect that customer.

Customers buy access to Arbinet's network, and Arbinet passes their traffic along to the ISPs that are performing best at the moment.

Customers can get this same type of optimized Internet access themselves if they buy access to multiple ISP networks and install route-optimization gear such as that made by RouteScience. OptimizedIP would eliminate the need for multiple access lines and capital and operational costs of the route-optimization gear.

Access to OptimizedIP costs $4,000 for a Gigabit Ethernet port and $1,000 for a 100M bit/sec Ethernet port. Customers pay an additional fee based on how much traffic they send.

The service is available in Los Angeles, and will be available in San Francisco and New York later this year. It will roll out to other major U.S. cities after that.