New service to help ISPs monitor 'Net

Internet monitoring company Renesys this week is expected to announce a service designed to provide ISPs with detailed visibility into Internet behavior.

Renesys Internet Intelligence Services are Web-based offerings that give service providers a view of Internet routes in real time from multiple vantage points around the world. Each view provides different levels of detail, which are intended to assist service providers in making business decisions regarding their own services.

The Renesys offering is designed as a value-added service on top of the Internet access services ISPs already provide. To attract and retain customers, ISPs need a level of "intelligence" about the Internet from both an operational standpoint - real-time information about their own networks - as well as a competitive standpoint - real-time information about the performance of competitors, Renesys says.

The Renesys services are a set of three offerings: Routing Intelligence, Market Intelligence and XML Connection.

Routing Intelligence provides information to detect and correct slowdowns or interruptions to Internet connections. It correlates routing information across different time periods and from multiple sources, and can display real-time and historical information.

Routing Intelligence is also available with an option that provides real-time alerts when networks become unreachable, IP addresses are hijacked, global routes are unstable or policies are violated.

Market Intelligence provides a set of reference-analysis tools to enable sales, marketing, business development and peering personnel to monitor and evaluate the Internet's competitive landscape. The core of Market Intelligence is Renesys' Internet Index, a database of information compiled daily from the Internet's global routing tables - the real-time map of 180,000 networks and 30,000 organizations worldwide that make up the Internet.

Renesys says this data contains competitive information on the global, national and regional rankings of all service providers based on the number and quality of customer networks they help connect to the Internet. Market Intelligence also provides annotated lists of service providers' customers, including their geographic distribution and an analysis of the services they receive from competing providers.

XML Connection is a set of APIs that allows users to integrate real-time XML inter-network monitoring data into security monitoring systems.

Renesys Routing Intelligence starts at $800 per seat per month. The History option includes three years of past data for an additional $200 per user, per month. The alarms option costs an additional $250 to $1,500 per seat based on the number of desired network prefixes, and an XMP option costs an additional $200 per seat, per month.

Market Intelligence starts at $1,000 per seat, per month. XML Connection costs $15,000 to $20,000 per month.