[32549] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Limits of reliability or is 99.999999999% realistic
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Toby_Williams@enron.net)
Tue Nov 28 03:47:49 2000
From: Toby_Williams@enron.net
To: mdevney@teamsphere.com
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Message-ID: <882569A5.0030209F.00@ecmta1.enron.net>
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 2000 08:45:36 +0000
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I think SLAs should always be supplied with a service and those that do=
not
offer one, miss a vital point about the service infrastructure they've =
put in
place.
There's not one single, ideal level of service that everyone should be =
striving
for with IP networks. We know this because no two applications have exa=
ctly the
same network requirements, hence consumer A will have subtley different=
requirements from consumer B.
End consumers *may* want a generalist service, that can do a bit of eve=
rything,
but as an ASP would your applications have the same network requirement=
s as a
video/VoIP provider? Would someone doing backup services share these
requirements?
There's a vast (and growing) space for differentiation of services and =
this can
only occur with valid SLAs.
From a legal perspective:
If I sell someone transit for a month, then the service is "down" that =
month,
and heh I didn't offer an SLA. Then you still have to pay me for the se=
rvice and
I pay you nothing back.
OK I'd lose my customers, but: I'd be considerably richer having sold b=
andwidth
for a month and not used any myself, than I should be considering I've =
just
ripped my customers off.
That's why the SLA exists. It is a necessary part of the contract that =
defines
the quality of the product to be sold.
Toby
All--
In a perfect world, your provider says the service is always on, the
service is always on. =A0In the real world, we have to deal with outage=
s --
some kids vandalise a phone box, new tech trips over some cables, some
idiot telco misimplements MPLS and brings your service down for a day..=
..
These things happen, and sometimes we all just have to suck it down and=
deal with it. =A0But if it happens continuously, you have to ask your
provider for some assurance that it won't keep happening. =A0This is wh=
at
SLAs are for.
In my experience, a company that delivers reasonable levels of service =
has
no need for SLAs with their clients. =A0The service is up, everybody is=
happy. =A0SLAs are like your parent telling you to do the dishes again =
"and
get it right this time, or else you go to bed with no jell-o!"
Which s why, in looking for a vendor, I ask for an SLA. =A0If they have=
one
as a standard offering, then I know that they've messed up a lot in the=
past, and will probably be messing up more than I like in the
future. =A0It's like the kid who never did his homework coming up to th=
e
teacher on the last day of school asking for extra credit. =A0NO YOU
FOOL! =A0You should have done it right the last 180 days!
Anyway, just my thoughts.
=
