Question: What is the agreement used in the Universal Metric to Flow operation and is a commitment between service provider and customer?
Context: An online service provider can, for example, be an Internet service provider, an email provider, a news provider (press), an entertainment provider (music, movies), a search engine, an e-commerce site, an online banking site, a health site, an official government site, a wiki, or a Usenet newsgroup.  In its original more limited definition, it referred only to a commercial computer communication service in which paid members could dial via a computer modem the service's private computer network and access various services and information resources such a bulletin boards, downloadable files and programs, news articles, chat rooms, and electronic mail services.  The term "online service" was also used in references to these dial-up services.  The traditional dial-up online service differed from the modern Internet service provider in that they provided a large degree of content that was only accessible by those who subscribed to the online service, while ISP mostly serves to provide access to the Internet and generally provides little if any exclusive content of its own.  In the U.S., the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (OCILLA) portion of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act has expanded the legal definition of online service in two different ways for different portions of the law.  It states in section 512(k)(1): Fido Solutions is a Canadian cellular telephone service provider owned by Rogers Communications.  Fido remains a separate entity from Rogers.  Although Fido's parent company, Rogers Communications, also operates another wireless, the brand has retained its own retail chain, customer service call centres, network servers and CEO.  Fido pioneered the concept of providing unlimited service in select Canadian cities.  Fido was the first carrier in Canada to launch a GSM-based network and the first wireless service provider in North America to offer General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) on its network. Layered Service Provider (LSP) is a deprecated feature of the Microsoft Windows Winsock 2 Service Provider Interface (SPI).  A Layered Service Provider is a DLL that uses Winsock APIs to attempt to insert itself into the TCP/IP protocol stack.  Once in the stack, a Layered Service Provider can intercept and modify inbound and outbound Internet traffic.  It allows processing of all the TCP/IP traffic taking place between the Internet and the applications that are accessing the Internet (such as a web browser, the email client, etc.).  For example, it could be used by malware to redirect web browers to rogue websites, or to block access to sites like Windows Update.  Alternatively, a computer security program could scan network traffic for viruses or other threats.  The Winsock "Service Provider Interface (SPI)" API provides a mechanism for layering providers on top of each other.  Winsock LSPs are available for a range of useful purposes, including parental controls and Web content filtering.  The parental controls web filter in Windows Vista is an LSP.  The layering order of all providers is kept in the Winsock Catalog. In Software Development / IT, a Service Level Requirement (SLR) is a broad statement from a customer to a service provider describing their service expectations.  A service provider prepares a service level agreement (SLA) based on the requirements from the customer.  For example: A customer may require a server be operational (uptime) for 99.95% of the year excluding maintenance. Bulk billing is a payment option under the Medicare system of universal health insurance in Australia.  It can cover a prescribed range of health services as listed in the Medicare Benefits Schedule, at the discretion of the health service provider.  The health service provider - usually a doctor - is paid 85% of the scheduled fee for outpatient services; and 75% of the scheduled fee for inpatient services, by billing the government via the patient's Medicare card.  The service provider receives a fixed proportion of the scheduled fee but avoids the costs and risks of billing and debt collection.  It could be described as a form of factoring. A service level objective (SLO) is a key element of a service level agreement (SLA) between a service provider and a customer.  SLOs are agreed upon as a means of measuring the performance of the Service Provider and are outlined as a way of avoiding disputes between the two parties based on misunderstanding. A service-level agreement (SLA) is defined as an official commitment that prevails between a service provider and a client.  Particular aspects of the service – quality, availability, responsibilities – are agreed between the service provider and the service user.  The most common component of SLA is that the services should be provided to the customer as agreed upon in the contract.  As an example, Internet service providers and telcos will commonly include service level agreements within the terms of their contracts with customers to define the level(s) of service being sold in plain language terms.  In this case the SLA will typically have a technical definition in "mean time between failures" (MTBF), "mean time to repair" or "mean time to recovery" (MTTR); identifying which party is responsible for reporting faults or paying fees; responsibility for various data rates; throughput; jitter; or similar measurable details. Asiatravel.com is a pan-Asia online hotel and travel agency.  It is supported by a network of operation and customer services offices in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Hong Kong, China and UAE.  It has transformed itself from a niche hotel reservation service provider to a total hotel and travel reservation service provider.  Providing three services on flights, tours and hotels, Asiatravel.com first of its kind in Asia.  The company offers discounted airfares for all major airlines, which can be booked on an instant confirmation basis. In information technology, a Service Level Indicator (SLI) is a measure of the service level provided by a service provider to a customer.  SLIs form the basis of Service Level Objectives (SLOs), which in turn form the basis of Service Level Agreements (SLAs); an SLI is thus also called an SLA metric. Universal Metric to Flow (UMF) technology enhances the ability to utilize Cisco NetFlow data for rapid traffic analysis.  Developed by network performance management company, "SevOne", in early 2010 and announced at Cisco Live in Las Vegas in July that year, the UMF technology was designed to automate the performance troubleshooting workflow, a major problem within the industry.  Universal Metric to Flow enables network operations to graph key network performance metrics from SNMP or network latency derived from IP SLA, observe a spike, highlight it, and drill down into the network traffic, providing immediate visibility into the cause of slow response times across a network.
Answer: service-level agreement