Service Level Expectations

The following outlines service-level expectations to be fulfilled by the CENIC Network Operations Center (NOC).

• Operate a trouble ticket system available for access by designated institutions connected to the California Research and Education Network (CalREN).
• The trouble ticket system shall be available at least 99% of the time. It will deploy a means of classifying “tickets” and responding:
  • Urgent: path to resolution within 60 minutes
  • High: path to resolution with 24 hours
  • Medium: path to resolution within 72 hours
  • Abuse: path to resolution within five business days
  • Low: research and data collection action
• The classification of a ticket may be set by the reporting associate and subsequently altered at that campus’s request.
• Operate the network backbone such that round-trip latency and jitter from a central measuring point closest to each backbone router does not exceed an average of 80 milliseconds over a five-minute period.
• Operate the network backbone such that packet loss to or from a central measuring point closest to each backbone router does not exceed an average of 0.1% over a five-minute period.
• Enforce SLAs with vendors for access circuits, fiber, backbone, and access hardware, and pursue any outage credits due under those SLAs, and apply those credits to the associate(s) impacted by the outage. Outages due to failure in such third-party equipment or services are not counted in the monthly outage limits that define meeting or failing this SLE.
• Any institution not receiving service in accordance with the above should bring the information to the attention of the CENIC Board of Directors by email to SLA@cenic.org for a determination as to appropriate corrective actions.
• Reports to the CENIC Board of Directors on the following service-level measures when requested:
  • Trouble ticket availability
  • Backbone outages
  • Latency and jitter
  • Packet loss
  • Outage statistics