On Sat, 6 Apr 2002, K. Graham wrote:
From my understanding there is a 99.97% up time value that most companies try and match. Is this a hard and fast rule or is this a value that we all try and emulate as best as we can? Do I have the value incorrect? Is it higher or lower? I had always thought that it was 99.97% but have not found anywhere to reference that figure, it was just via talking with others and checking available uptime statistics. My understanding also takes into account that it does not include controlled downtime due to any maintenances.
There is no industry technical standard. Different Internet service providers advertise a wide-variety of numbers set by their marketing departments. Depending on the customer and provider, you may negogiate other values more suitable for your budget and requirements. It is common for ISPs to advertise 100% uptime guarantee*. That asterisk is the critical piece of information. Most service providers loath to call anything an "outage" no matter how bad the service gets. Just what is emergency scheduled maintenance or routine emergency operation?