The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California CENIC 5757 Plaza Dr. Ste 205 Cypress, CA 90630(714) Dave Reese CTO 5th Quilt Fiber Workshop October 13, 2006

The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California CENIC 5757 Plaza Dr. Ste 205 Cypress, CA 90630(714) “SLAs are not worth the paper they are written on.” -- David Farmer, University of Minnesota

CENIC 5757 Plaza Dr. Ste 205 Cypress, CA (714) Discussion Topics  Asked to present on:  Actual SLA’s  Sparing  Measuring  Contract Language  Penalties  Impact to design  With that out of the way…

CENIC 5757 Plaza Dr. Ste 205 Cypress, CA (714) CA State Budget Language The California State Budget for 06-07, signed into law on June 30, 2006 provides: SEC (a) For the purposes of this section, “educational institutions” means the University of California (UC), upon the approval of its Board of Regents, the California State University (CSU), the California Community Colleges (CCC), and the State Department of Education (SDE), or their designees, as part of their participation on the Board of the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC). (b) To expend General Fund, student fee revenue, or any other monies for the California Research and education Network (CalREN) state educational institutions shall do all of the following: (3)Approve an agreement that designates specific levels of service to be provided by CalREN to all public education segments.

CENIC 5757 Plaza Dr. Ste 205 Cypress, CA (714) Why all the fuss over SLA?  Confusion over CENIC == Carrier  We probably contributed to this as, well, we do ‘look’ more like a carrier every day!  Our services aren’t any less reliable  They’re better, but very hard to prove  And we look bad by fighting against an SLA (We must be hiding something?)  Something magical about potential to getting money back!

CENIC 5757 Plaza Dr. Ste 205 Cypress, CA (714) Components of Carrier SLA’s  Outages are counted only when:  unplanned (i.e., maintenance work is not included)  caused by circumstances within the control of the provider  they exceed a minimum time period

CENIC 5757 Plaza Dr. Ste 205 Cypress, CA (714) Compensation for outages  Commercial providers credit customers based on length of outage and the monthly cost of affected service  Credits are applied to subsequent invoice  Credits may be limited to a maximum dollar figure  Commercial carriers are for-profit corporations and SLA compensation is built into cost of service

CENIC 5757 Plaza Dr. Ste 205 Cypress, CA (714) What should a RON do?  Service Level = $$$$  Services are (typically) funded directly by our ‘members’  Thus ‘member’ is actually in control of service level by willingness to pay for:  Number of spares, redundancy, access circuit bandwidth, upgrades to capacity…  Level of maintenance (NBD, 7x24x365)  Staffing levels  Etc.

CENIC 5757 Plaza Dr. Ste 205 Cypress, CA (714) CENIC SLA Development  In progress (but very slow)  99.99% of campus technical contacts think this is waste of time  Enforce SLAs of our providers (and exclude their failures to perform from our SLA)  Limiting scope of SLA to the backbone  Access ‘circuits’ covered by provider SLA  We found it too difficult to write language that excluded site-caused problems (saturated circuit, site based power problems, viruses/worms, forcing us to accept a design we disagree with, etc.)

CENIC 5757 Plaza Dr. Ste 205 Cypress, CA (714) CENIC SLA Development  Measurement implies public reporting  Most providers don’t actually do this, but for some reason we are being held to higher standard (“prove it”)  Cost of SLA  We are asking the group that is working on the draft language to estimate the cost of implementation  Communicating expectation that SLA cost needs to be funded, not just ‘included’

CENIC 5757 Plaza Dr. Ste 205 Cypress, CA (714) CENIC SLA Development  Penalties  Our proposal is that failure to meet SLA is a Board discussion item  For compensation we’ll need to increase their charges accordingly (Will they then want a rebate of any fees not returned to them?)

CENIC 5757 Plaza Dr. Ste 205 Cypress, CA (714) Proposed SLA Components  NOC and trouble ticket system  Maximum backbone router outage duration and frequency (per month)  Maximum latency and packet loss from central measurement point to backbone routers (smokeping)  Scheduled maintenance excluded  Enforce vendor SLAs  Seek resolution with Board if dissatisfied

CENIC 5757 Plaza Dr. Ste 205 Cypress, CA (714) K12 SLA Term Requirements  Service Overview  Term  Responsibilities  Service Details  Exceptions  Sampling and Reporting  Penalties  Dispute Resolution and Escalation  Change Requests

CENIC 5757 Plaza Dr. Ste 205 Cypress, CA (714) K12 Expectation for SLA  Key quality indicators:  Availability, Speech/video quality, Response time, Round-trip delay, Delay, Latency, Jitter, Packet loss, Locking, Transaction rate, Goodput (carried), Throughput (offered), Idle time, Authorization, Confidentiality, Integrity, Non-repudiation, Disk space, Help desk, Training, Interoperability, Pickup time, Time to close, Hold time, Connect time, Graceful degradation, Revocation

CENIC 5757 Plaza Dr. Ste 205 Cypress, CA (714) One size doesn’t fit all  Cannot come to full agreement with all segments (K12) on SLA  Possible solution: Two SLAs  Lightweight (low $) for all members  Extensive (high $) for K12

The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California CENIC 5757 Plaza Dr. Ste 205 Cypress, CA 90630(714) Questions?