Washington, D.C. - AT&T today announced a series of performance guarantees and monitoring tools for its WAN and IP customers.
Also today, AT&T announced a managed-firewall service that also incorporates service level agreements (SLAs).
Key to the company's new WAN SLAs is Web-based access to performance figures. Customers will be able to access metrics over the Web in five areas: provisioning, network availability, restoration time, latency and throughput. Customers will also be able to place orders and submit trouble tickets over the Web.
The service is initially available for frame relay users with at least 20 permanent virtual circuits. There is no charge. The company will extend the service to IP customers in the near future.
AT&T will use SLA monitoring software from Visual Networks. Among AT&T's metrics: Maintain 99.9% network uptime, restore PVCs within four hours, maintain 99.99% data delivery rate at or below CIR.
"We're covering the waterfront," said Steve Hindman, vice president for data services.
Separately, AT&T announced a managed firewall service that incorporates Checkpoint-1 firewall software running on servers from Sun Microsystems, Inc. For $2,500 a month per firewall, customers also gain access to a separate set of SLAs that includes 99.5% hardware availability, 99.95% network uptime and equipment repairs within eight hours.
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