April 22, 1999 Web posted at: 6:15 p.m. EDT (2215 GMT) by Denise Pappalardo and Sandra Gittlen

From...

LOS ANGELES (IDG) -- While ISPs are urging customers to put mission-critical data on the 'Net, you would have been hard-pressed to find service providers at last week's Spring Internet World '99 show with tools for letting users monitor that traffic.

Users want tools to monitor traffic latency, packet loss and network availability of multiple dedicated Internet access connections. Because ISPs have been slow to roll out those packages, users such as Bill Carr at the Federal Aviation Administration have put the brakes on their Internet plans.

Carr, a radar systems specialist, says the FAA is considering using the Internet as an alternative to its current dedicated links as a way to reduce sky-high telecom costs. But Carr says he wants to closely monitor any classified data, such as secure flight information, that he would be sending across the wires.

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"If Web monitoring tools were in place, that would impact our decision to begin using the Internet," he says. "Just knowing providers had the tools would make me feel more comfortable about signing off on a service-level agreement for mission-critical data."

Bob Dougherty of Subaru America agrees. He is setting up an extranet for the car manufacturer's 600 franchise owners. Keeping track of traffic over the Internet is essential to the project's success, says Dougherty, chief information officer and IT director at the company's headquarters in Cherry Hill, N.J. Subaru dealership owners will be filing warranty information, and ordering parts and supplies over the Internet.

But like most users, Dougherty's choices are limited. In fact, even the largest ISP in the world, MCI WorldCom's UUNET, does not offer customers real-time monitoring tools.

UUNET customers get one of the best SLAs on the market, with the guarantee of 100% network availability and round-trip delay of no more than 85 msec. But users are at the mercy of UUNET to verify that SLAs have been met. UUNET says offering tools that let users peer into its network would be a security risk.

But Dwight Gibbs, chief technical fool at The Motley Fool, believes some ISPs are dragging their feet because they aren't prepared to give users software that might make the service providers look bad from a performance standpoint. Gibbs wants a Web-based tool that provides trend data such as end-to-end speed and throughput information, he says.

UUNET offers users a site that states the average monthly round-trip latency of traffic over its network. But the usefulness of this information to back up SLAs is questionable at best. Users need tools that would tell them now - not in one month - if their packets are being delivered.

UUNET's prime competitors AT&T WorldNet, Intermedia Business Internet and Cable & Wireless USA aren't offering their customers much more. The ISPs have Web sites that show congestion points on their networks. AT&T WorldNet's site also shows network packet loss. Concentric Network is opening up a performance Web site next week.

Still, the information on these sites is skewed because the ISPs offer statistics only from a small percentage of their routers.

Research efforts at AT&T Labs may improve the situation. AT&T WorldNet is testdriving the labs' network monitoring tool called Netscope, which AT&T Labs researchers discussed last week at Internet World. Though AT&T WorldNet is not yet using the tool on its commercial network, AT&T Labs says the tool could be fully deployed in WorldNet and other ISPs within the year.

With Netscope, ISPs could create a detailed analysis of traffic that they could offer to users. Netscope looks at the source and destination of packets on certain links and is able to identify exactly where congestion is occurring.

Tools such as Netscope could help ISPs back their SLAs with real-time statistics, AT&T Labs says.