[Samurai]

Originally Posted by NetfreakBombay

#1 is easy to verify, test ALL 8 IPs one by one (in isolation). E.g .set router's public IP to A.B.C.D then A.B.C.D+1, A.B.C.D+2 so on up to A.B.C.D+7.
Set subnet mask to 255.255.255.0 for testing.

Doesn't work. Using 224 as the mask, I tried from .176 to .183 one by one. Both 176 and 183 doesn't work with 224 mask although they are well within range. That means they have not enabled it for me. The 177 is the router/gateway. In short, only 178-182 is usable, just 5 IPs. BTW, I can't change router's IP, I don't have access.

[Samurai]

They finally allocated a new range of IPs with 28bit mask, now I have 13 IPs available. Soon I will be moving all external servers to the new network.

[jkdas]

Originally Posted by Samurai

They finally allocated a new range of IPs with 28bit mask, now I have 13 IPs available. Soon I will be moving all external servers to the new network.

28 and hence should be 14 right?

And you can only use the range they give. What if the next range is used by another company???

1:1 has 99.99% SLA. Surprised to hear 99.95% SLA for 1:1!

Had very bad experience with VSNL 1:1 recently. They change more than their competitors too.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by jkdas

28 and hence should be 14 right?

The gateway takes away one.

Originally Posted by jkdas

And you can only use the range they give. What if the next range is used by another company???

Huh! I am using the range I was given, why should I care about the next range?

Originally Posted by jkdas

1:1 has 99.99% SLA. Surprised to hear 99.95% SLA for 1:1!

There are multiple SLA levels for 1:1, this is what I got for the price I am paying, good enough for me considering I am switching from ADSL.

[mmmjgm]

Hi Samurai,

My 2 cents of haggling and harrowing ISP experience (leased lines) at our offices. Tata or Direct Internet now as branded is good.

Please ensure upon what unit of time they calculate 99.5% SLA. Minimum amount of time could be one hour or 2 hours, there are some ISPs which state that any downtime less than one hour is perfectly acceptable and no calls to be escalated during a downtime of less than one hour.

Cheers
M M

[Samurai]

We had a 17 hour downtime last week. After a thunder storm in the evening, we lost connectivity. The closest technician was 75Kms away in Mangalore and they didn't show up until next day morning. It turned out to be blown fuse at the local hub from where they switch to RF.

I guess this wouldn't happen in a city, but being a lone customer in a remote location, this may repeat.

We had very time critical installations to be done on that night. We switched back to Airtel ADSL and got that done. Thank god for redundancy.

[Samurai]

Last week we had one more downtime, lasted 3 hours.

Today it is down again. Don't know how long it will take to come back up. That's like 3 downtimes in 3 weeks. Everytime, our Airtel ADSL backup connection is saving our hide. Actually, the Airtel ADSL has much better uptime record than Reliance leased line. So much for SLAs and contracts.

[tsk1979]

So does this mean you don't have to pay for the link since they could not meet their SLA?
Or can you sue them in court and win big money?
for example Vodafone had to give 20K because they enabled caller tune for a dame(Bheegi Bheegi Raaton mein) without her permission.

I am trying to understand, what does a SLA entitle a customer to

[NetfreakBombay]

Originally Posted by tsk1979

I am trying to understand, what does a SLA entitle a customer to

SLA is just a "feel good" factor. Breach of SLA is not a criminal offense. So you will have to sue them in civil/consumer court for damages.

At best customer would get that month's money back. At worst, customer would spend months fighting this course.

Originally Posted by Samurai

Airtel ADSL has much better uptime record than Reliance leased line. So much for SLAs and contracts.

I think its consistent across the country (for SMB). Primary reason would be economics of scale.

For accounts with billing of less then few lakh rupees every month, it would not be economical for them to deploy 24/7 monitoring + employees on field to retroactively fix line problems. And location of such large accounts would be clustered geographically.
Have heard great feedback about leased lines from those who manage large ITES/Banking networks, but not from others.

With ADSL:

1. If last mile goes down Airtel/Reliance will face hourly losses due to outage of outgoing calls in voice networks.
2. Voice infrastructure is going to require significant manpower anyways so they can't avoid this cost.

**Just my opinion, would be great if those working in this sector could comment.

[tsk1979]

So SLA is just feel good and not legally enforceable?
Does that mean if SLA is breached, the customer can't refuse to pay bill for that month? He/She has to go to court for that?

[mmmjgm]

Originally Posted by tsk1979

So SLA is just feel good and not legally enforceable?
Does that mean if SLA is breached, the customer can't refuse to pay bill for that month? He/She has to go to court for that?

The SLA helps the buyer of the service to deduct amounts as agreed within the SLA Agreement and be on the correct side of the law while doing so.

Further details need to be confirmed once the SLA agreement is shared.

cheers

M M

[NetfreakBombay]

Originally Posted by tsk1979

if SLA is breached, the customer can't refuse to pay bill for that month?

Most generic agreements will say certain % of bill can be refunded depending on downtime.

Point is, as a business owner customer has more pressing things to do then chase leased line provider for getting a larger waiver.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Is there anybody here who has used Reliance leased line service, how is your user experience, downtimes, etc.

Now that I have used it for 5 months, I can answer this question myself.

Reliance leased line service is really bad. I don't know whether it is because I am in a small town, but leased line is leased line. When I am paying 35K per month, I expect it not to go down. But it goes down at least 3-4 times a month, sometimes more. Because of that reason, I am unable to cancel Airtel ADSL, I need that backup whenever Reliance bites the dust. So that adds up few more thousands to the bill. In fact, I had to upgrade the license on the Cisco ASA 5505 to get dual ISP support ($600 more) so that it switches to the backup ISP automatically.

When the contract expires, I will not renew, in fact I have already started evaluating other ISPs.

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by tsk1979

So SLA is just feel good and not legally enforceable?
Does that mean if SLA is breached, the customer can't refuse to pay bill for that month? He/She has to go to court for that?

The SLA on my leased line back in London was so good we were almost pleased when it went down .

Just a few hours of down time could wipe out our monthly bill of over 1,000 GBP (over 70,000 INR)

It was honoured by the company, and they did monitor it: they paid out even if we didn't notice, even if it went down at night, which had no effect at all on our business.

[Samurai]

The 1Mbps 1:1 leased line from from Reliance acts more like dial-up sometime.

This was from today...