Availability cannot be calculated in advance. It typically is based on historical component failure information. Sound design ensures redundancy and eliminates single point of failure. As for the rest, CIR, Latency, Jitter, Loss ..... this can be tested prior to customer handover with any number of tools and protocols including IEEE 802.11ag/ah, ITU-T 1731, IETF RFC2544. Hand-helds are typically not cost effective. Rich Andreas Comcast Network Engineering -----Original Message----- From: Saqib Ilyas [mailto:msaqib@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2009 10:50 AM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Network SLA Greetings I am curious to know about any tools/techniques that a service provider uses to assess an SLA before signing it. That is to say, how does an administrator know if he/she can meet what he is promising. Is it based on experience? Are there commonly used tools for this? Thanks and best regards -- Muhammad Saqib Ilyas PhD Student, Computer Science and Engineering Lahore University of Management Sciences