UUNET Technologies Inc. is upping its dedicated Internet-access service-level agreements (SLA). The WorldCom Inc. company announced new guarantees Tuesday that offer customers lower latency and a packet delivery guarantee.
UUNET’s SLA guarantees that round-trip latency over its network will not exceed 65 milliseconds. This SLA is for both domestic and international UUNET customers, but the guarantee applies only to traffic within a specific region. For example, traffic between the U.S. and Japan would not be covered.
The ISP now matches Genuity’s latency guarantee of 65 msec, announced in July. Genuity Inc.’s SLA also includes the local loop portion of a customer’s connection, if the local service is ordered through Genuity. But UUNET’s minimum latency guarantee does not include the local loop.
Customers now get a 99% packet delivery guarantee. Still part of UUNET’s standard SLA are its guarantee of 100% network availability and its proactive notification guarantee that states all customers will be notified within 15 minutes of a network outage.
UUNET has also improved its automatic credit methodology. Previously, UUNET only credited customers if it exceeded its latency guarantee for two consecutive months. Now the ISP is crediting customers if it exceeds its latency guarantee or if less than 99% of all packets are delivered within one month.
“We’ve eliminated the second month, which was used to fixed the problem,” says Ralph Montfort, director of access products at the Ashburn, Va., ISP.
If UUNET’s network is unavailable for a fraction of an hour, customers are credited one day of service. If the ISP does not meet its minimum latency guarantee or packet delivery guarantee customers will be automatically credited one day of service.
If the ISP does not notify a customer within 15 minutes of an outage, then that customer is credited one day of service. UUNET also guarantees that if it does not install a T-1 or a T-3 line when it said it would, then customers only have to pay half of their installation fee.