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When ISPs roll out a new service-level agreement, they usually make stronger performance promises available to all of its customers. But that's not what Cable & Wireless did with its latest SLA.
Cable & Wireless did raise the bar on performance guarantees, offering its new DirectConnect dedicated Internet access customers an SLA that says users will not experience more than 70 msec worth of latency on average across the ISP's Internet backbone per month. And Cable & Wireless also is now guaranteeing that its customers will not experience any more than 1% of packet loss on average per month.
But these new SLAs are not automatically available to existing Cable & Wireless' dedicated Internet access customers. Instead, existing DirectConnect customers have to request the SLA when it comes time to renegotiate their contracts.
Cable & Wireless says that it couldn't offer the SLA to all customers automatically, because the ISP has to set up access to its secure Web site, where it now posts reports on its network performance for each month. And in order to ensure that this site remains secure, it has to register each customer individually. This is the Web site that all of Cable & Wireless' customers that have DirectConnect service and have signed up for the SLA will go to check Cable & Wireless' performance at the end of each month.
One other thing that Cable & Wireless is not doing for its customers is instituting automatic credits when it fails to meet its SLA for any given month. Cable & Wireless guarantees that if it misses its latency or its packet loss guarantee, it will offer its customers a three-day service credit. However, the customer has to notify Cable & Wireless that the firm failed to meet the guarantee. In other words, Cable & Wireless does not automatically credit you. (This service credit does not include local loop charges.)
UUNET is the only ISP to offer automatic credits when it fails to meet its SLA. GTE Internetworking and PSINet, like Cable & Wireless, are also holding their wallets close to their respective chests, and do offer automatic credits.
And the funny thing is a one to three-day service credit really doesn't offer a business user much in terms of compensation. If you're paying $1,000 per month to an ISP for a T-1, you'll only be looking, in most cases at a $35 to $100 credit if your ISP misses its SLA.
But Cable & Wireless says that it's not a money issue, but an administrative issue. The firm is claiming that it would take a lot to develop a system that could automatically credit each account. And the ISP says that it likes to leave the crediting to individual account teams. I guess that's so if they have a really big customer, they can throw a couple of extra dollars their way if the ISP sustained a big performance failure.
While this newsletter will be read as a general complaint about the lack of automation when it comes to Cable & Wireless' SLAs, it must be said that SLAs for dedicated Internet access services are much better than they were 18 to 24 months ago.
Are you satisfied with the SLA that your ISP is offering? What else would you like to see in it? Should ISPs guarantee performance over multiple ISP backbone networks, taking advantage of private peering connections? Or would you rather see your ISP guarantee your local loop connection? Drop us a line (denisep@nww.com) and let us know.
RELATED LINKS
Denise Pappalardo is a senior editor for Network World, covering ISPs, VPNs and related topics. Reach her at denisep@nww.com.
Internet Services archive
Past newsletters.
Network World, 11/29/99.
Cable & Wireless' data center push
Network World, 11/08/99.
Trying to unravel the bundling fallacy
Network World, 11/01/99.
UUNET expands its SLAs overseas
Network World, 10/28/99.
The SLA angle
Network World, 10/25/99.
