The reason for this perception is that non engineering folks don't understand the enginnering behind almost perfect uptimes. Typical Joe executive just knows he believes his business is mission critical and must always be available. If you give someone two router ports running hsrp, connect an alteon or similar 1 public many private ip switch to each of these, and put at least 2 servers behind each switch, provide instant generator power backup, and multiple links thru different providers to the net, this can provide the 99.bazillion 9s level that customers desire. Some slas are meaningful. Just make it so as time goes on in the outage, an increasing portion of the customer's costs are waived. Nothing talks like money in business or politics. Brian
In today's internet world they're just marketing drivel.
Naturally such strong statements beg for counterexample; please, someone, tell us about providers that offer SLAs with big enough payoffs to provide some sort of incentive, who deliver on the service levels they boast about. Please!
-Bennett