By Ron Coates, 1 February 2001 13:00
NEWS In its first report on ISP performance, internet monitoring firm iowatch claimed 82 per cent of connections experienced enough downtime to breach a 99.99 per cent SLA in January. Helen Kist, MD of iowatch, said: "I always thought the promises were a bit glossy, but I didn't believe that it would be that bad." The survey shows an average monthly downtime of 97 minutes with the majority being well under this figure and a minority being well over. One ISP registered 210 minutes downtime in a month. Kist pointed out that the ultra-competitive ISP market was forcing ISPs to offer unrealistic SLAs to please their customers. She said: "I don't expect customers to immediately demand a refund or credit. This information is a tool as to what they can expect and what quality of service they can get. Some will find 99 per cent availability enough." Tim Snape, council member of the ISPA (ISP Association), put the blame squarely on BT, the supplier to transport services. He said: "One hour down in a thousand days, 99 per cent availability, is not that difficult - if you exclude the carrier. We've had five major outages in four years, and each time it was BT's fault. On top of that though, you always get mistakes." Graham Fisher, analyst at Bloor Research, advised users to be more reasonable in their demands. He said: "I don't think that ISPs perform as well as they should. But customers have to ask themselves if an SLA is realistic. An ISP that imposes reasonable conditions will probably give a good relationship and some respect."
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