Excite@Home, AT&T assure always-on network

Building on partnership forged earlier this year, Excite@Home and its largest shareholder, AT&T, said yesterday they would offer a service level agreement that assures customers of 100% network availability.

Internet content providers that offer streaming video or audio and whose businesses rely on uninterrupted connectivity are best suited for the SLA, an Excite@Home spokeswoman said. The service agreement uses a redundancy configuration called managed multi-homing that utilizes two separate networks to safeguard against total network loss.

The system includes two independent circuits to the customer’s locations--one connection to Excite@Home’s backbone and the other to AT&T’s. Should the primary AT&T network fail, the traffic is automatically rerouted and carried over the secondary Excite@Home network.

“Most carriers have a service level agreement, but it’s only within their network,” said the Excite@Home spokeswoman. “Once the traffic or data leaves their network, they can’t guarantee what the performance will be.”

In February 2001, the companies announced a joint partnership to identify cost-effective means of optimizing Web content delivery. The SLA expands on that announcement by assuring business customers of 100% network availability, no more than 75 milliseconds of average monthly latency across networks, and 1% average monthly packet loss. Customers that do not receive this level of service will be credited.

“Businesses looking for the best-in-class performance from their media rich content now have assurances from two world-class networks,” said Mike Jenner, vice president and general manger of AT&T Internet connectivity services, in a statement.

Additionally, customers have the option to monitor and manage their networks online, analyzing monthly performance averages or real-time data in U.S. cities.

Though the companies leave little room to improve connectivity by guaranteeing 100% availability, the Excite@Home spokeswoman said they would continue working toward improving latency and packet-loss levels.

“Moving forward, we’re going to continue to refine and increase the performance of this service level agreement,” she said.