Leveling the monitoring field

Bell Atlantic last week unveiled a service that lets businesses with dedicated Internet access as slow as 56 kb/s view on-line reports of the amount and type of data traffic moving over their connections daily, weekly or monthly.

Using Cabletron software, Bell Atlantic will produce its Statistics View Reports by sampling information at 10-minute intervals each day. Users then can access the data in graphical or tabular form on a secured, password-protected Web site.

Daily reports are published seven days a week, weekly reports are published every Monday and monthly reports are published on the first calendar day of each month. Additionally, the carrier will store up to one year's worth of historical trend data.

Users "can get a really quick view with the graphical [report], and they can download the tabular data and manipulate it any way they want," said Joe DiPeppe, product manager for Bell Atlantic.

Bell Atlantic is offering the reports for switched multi-megabit data service, frame relay and private line customers with contracts of at least one year. The reports, which include information on usage rates, line loads, and the numbers of packets, bits and frames sent and received, cost $100 a month for most users. Businesses with 56 kb/s service will be charged $50 monthly.

"It's a flat-rate bill, and they can use it as much or as little as they want," said DiPeppe, noting that Bell Atlantic is aiming the service at smaller businesses without the resources to track network usage on their own.

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