Service Level Agreements and QoS Delivery in Mission Oriented Networks

The SLA is an essential tool for delivering mission critical networking services over a Global Information Grid (GIG) network infrastructure that will be designed and operated by many different entities. The GIG integrates Network Service Domains (NSD) created by many acquisition programs. Each NSD will be operated by a NSP. Some NSPs will operate more than one NSD. Some User Communities will be satisfied with best effort services across multiple domains. Others will require some level of guaranteed capacity and quality of service (QoS) in order to meet their mission goals. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) play major roles in achieving this objective. In particular, SLAs enable User Communities to specify their traffic and QoS requirements and enable NSPs to plan and promise service levels across the NSDs they control. To achieve these goals, it is important to establish a set of GIG-wide standards for creating SLAs between User Communities and one or more NSPs. In particular, it is important to define a common set of metrics and contents for creating SLAs. Standardized templates, guidelines for allocation of metrics among NSDs, and standardized Service Offerings by NSPs, will help structure SLAs in ways that allow end-to-end requirements to be met. Many User Communities will need service from more than one NSP. These User Communities will benefit from an organizational structure and a process to create a single SLA that incorporates the services of multiple NSPs. This document discusses a notional cooperative process for this purpose. This paper provides recommendations for implementing SLAs, creating SLA processes and roles, and selecting SLA metrics to be used by Global Information Grid (GIG) User Communities and Network Service Providers. SLAs define the performance metrics, obligations and financial relationships between User Communities and Network Service Providers (NSP), and between cooperating NSPs. Performance metrics include throughput, packet delay, and packet loss. Obligations include reporting requirements, customer support requirements, incentives and methods for resolving disputes. Financial relationships define the cost for the services covered in the SLA.