On Mon, Sep 15, 2025 at 9:19 AM Tom Beecher via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:
*nods* Well, and that's the rub. Their expectations don't match any Internet SLA I've ever seen, much less for standard broadband. However, simply telling the customer that we're within our SLA or proving it's not our fault doesn't do much to enhance customer satisfaction and thus
doesn't
help our reputation. Hearing from others that the broadcast industry has already figured this problem out and sends the same stream via multiple paths is a big help in getting us going in the right direction.
If we assume that these 6 1s interruptions are actually the fault of the network providing the connectivity, then you're already much better than 6 9s of reliability, as Jay said. You'd be hard pressed to get much better. But again, without technical proof here that the network service itself is actually the cause of the issue, you're kind of in the tall grass still.
We had broadcast video teams internally years ago that would come to us with all kinds of similar 'small burp' problems, and blame the network for it. In 95% of cases, the problem turned out to be their equipment or applications doing it to themselves. Had nothing to do with the network at all. Hundreds of hours were sunk proving that.
The flip side to that, though, is the 5% of the time when it turns out to be misunderstood queue handling on a particular type of linecard when it is configured with non-default queue parameters and microbursts hit the linecard buffers...and after hundreds of hours of debugging, it really does turn out to be a network problem. The customer always remembers that 5%, and comes back wagging the finger at the network for every hiccup, conveniently forgetting the other 95% of the times when it wasn't the network. ^_^;;
You don't have to meet every expectation of every subscriber. It's totally fair for you to say "It appears as if the service we provide may not be suitable for your needs. We'd be happy to continue to provide you services, but it may be beneficial for you to investigate other options." Reasonable people will respect that. Unreasonable people stomp their feet and yell, but those people are going to stomp their feet and yell no matter what.
Also known as the "here is your SLA credit refund for the 1 second of lost traffic. We're so sorry. Please don't spend it all at once." answer. ;) Matt