Savvis Communications next week is expected to announce new service-level agreements (SLA) for its dedicated Internet access service customers that will guarantee minimum packet loss, network availability and roundtrip latency.
Savvis, a national ISP, is breaking new ground with its minimum packet loss guarantee. The St. Louis-based ISP is believed to be the first to guarantee a minimum of 5% packet loss for the entire month. Savvis is offering users a one-day credit if they experience more than 5% packet loss during the month.
Savvis is also guaranteeing its Internet backbone will be available 100% of the time for all of its customers that sign one-year contracts. If Savvis does not meet this guarantee, users will be credited one day's worth of service for every hour the network is not available.
If the network is unavailable for more than eight hours, users have the option of breaking their contract with Savvis without any penalties. Last month, UUNET WorldCom became the first ISP to offer 100% network availability.
In addition, Savvis is actually guaranteeing Internet roundtrip latency. Most ISPs only guarantee latency on their own backbone, but Savvis is telling business users they will not experience more than 200 msec worth of packet delay at any given time.
While 200 msec is not an aggressive figure, it's a start. Users can typically find much lower round trip latency guarantees from other ISPs, but they are only measuring their own backbone. For instance, UUNET supports a minimum of 85 msec worth of delay on its network.
And like UUNET Savvis is also guaranteeing its customers that it will notify them within 15 minutes of any network outage and that it will install their customers' service requests within 40 to 60 business days.
Savvis' SLAs will be available to all of its customers at no additional charge Oct. 1.
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