Leased line SLA.

Do lease line sla cover connection speed and ultimately download and upload speeds?

For example, if someone was on a 100/100 service, should they see that actual download speed regardless?

Reason I ask is I know someone who has just had this installed and is only seeing around 90ish.

If it makes any difference, he is connected via TalkTalkBusiness network with his ISP.

Thanks guys.

Edited by Alucidnation (Wed 20-Nov-19 07:02:49)

You will get whatever the SLA you have signed says you will get.

But you should beware that the total speed of 100Mbps will include ethernet headers and IP headers. If you are measuring throughput with a speedtest site it will count only the TCP payload. The best-case scenario is to see ~94Mbps of payload throughput on a 100Mbps ethernet presentation.

The actual throughput is always slightly less than the connection rate after overheads, doesn't matter if its a leased line, FTTP, or xDSL. So ~ 90 Mb/s throughput on a 100/100 line sounds about right.

Great, thanks guys.

Do bear in mind that any SLA can only cover the part of the network over which the ISP has direct control - which is usually as far as their peering points with third parties.

You may get the full speed all day and all night within their own network but they can't guarantee what speed you'll get to a service hosted by a different ISP.

SLAs may make no mention of bandwidth but concentrate instead on things like uptime and time from fault condition to restoration of service.

Edited by caffn8me (Thu 21-Nov-19 08:29:18)

It kind of defeats the purpose of getting a leased line if speeds cannot be guaranteed, especially on the high end services costing £100s or £1000s per month. We don't know what level of SLA the OP's friend has so this may not apply but many business ISPs sell leased lines as "uncontended" which means you get your own private (unshared) 'tunnel' to the internet, and of course you pay a pretty penny for the privilege. There are plenty of ISPs who include a speed guarantee in their leased lines SLA (BT Business & Spectrum Internet spring to mind) and they certainly don't put a disclaimer saying the guaranteed speeds only apply on a certain part of the circuit. Unless you were referring to cheaper residential/small business grade services?

Edited by deleted (Thu 21-Nov-19 10:09:11)

How can a leased line provider guarantee to the ISP�s customer the throughout from NowTV sport channels when the Boat Race, an F1 race and the London Marathon are on simultaneously?

Given such a combination or similar, which could happen, that could also result in a large number of speed tests being run at the same time. Two test providers being well known here, thinkbroadband and Ookla, with a specific site on the latter having just been praised so possibly hit hardest in future.

Uncontended to the internet for the customer, yes, uncontended from the other end anywhere impossible to control.

I agree, hence why I said

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

many business ISPs sell leased lines as "uncontended" which means you get your own private (unshared) 'tunnel' to the internet

In other words, the speed guarantees only apply as far as the point at which the circuit connects to the WWW.

However my previous post was mainly in reply to

In reply to a post by caffn8me:

SLAs may make no mention of bandwidth but concentrate instead on things like uptime and time from fault condition to restoration of service.

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

It kind of defeats the purpose of getting a leased line if speeds cannot be guaranteed, especially on the high end services costing £100s or £1000s per month. We don't know what level of SLA the OP's friend has so this may not apply but many business ISPs sell leased lines as "uncontended" which means you get your own private (unshared) 'tunnel' to the internet, and of course you pay a pretty penny for the privilege. There are plenty of ISPs who include a speed guarantee in their leased lines SLA (BT Business & Spectrum Internet spring to mind) and they certainly don't put a disclaimer saying the guaranteed speeds only apply on a certain part of the circuit. Unless you were referring to cheaper residential/small business grade services?

You misunderstand the purpose of a leased line - have you ever had one? No ISP can guarantee speeds across the internet as that is completely beyond their control. They can only guarantee speed and contention to their boundary.

In the case of a tier 1 ISP which has its own international dedicated circuits, that means to internet exchanges in other countries where they peer with foreign ISPs. Once traffic is on a third party ISP's infrastructure, your ISP has zero control over it so can't offer any service guarantee.

Benefits of a leased line are no (or little) contention across the ISP's own core network, uptime guarantees and priority fault resolution.

I had uncontended leased lines at home and a personal leased line to my desk at work in the days before ADSL. Because the circuits were constantly monitored, if there was a fault, the ISP would know immediately and swing into action to fix it without any need for me to contact support. In fact, support would contact me to let me know there was a problem. On one occasion, my leased line at home went down because a BT engineer installing another circuit had managed to break mine. I think this was fixed in about two hours without me even having to raise a fault ticket.

Don't forget that companies frequently use leased lines so they can run VPNs between branches for their internal systems as it's cheaper than running point to point circuits. If the branches use the same ISP for connection, they can get guaranteed bandwidth between them. That's what they need guaranteed bandwidth for - not surfing the web.

I was replying to the bulk and overall meaning of your post, not that out of context part quotation. Which importantly is immediately preceded by the word "but".

My final sentence in my previous reply specifically accepts the bit (plus but) that you just quoted .

I was disputing the rest. The operative words being:-

It kind of defeats the purpose of getting a leased line if speeds cannot be guaranteed, especially on the high end services costing £100s or £1000s per month.
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There are plenty of ISPs who include a speed guarantee in their leased lines SLA (BT Business & Spectrum Internet spring to mind) and they certainly don't put a disclaimer saying the guaranteed speeds only apply on a certain part of the circuit.

They can't guarantee that unless, as caffn8me says, the two end user locations are using the same ISP and both on leased lines.