The overnet also lets DI avoid peering agreements with other ISPs, another big factor a growing number of ISPs have to deal with when trying to arrange for high performance for their customers. To support customers that need connections in areas where DI has no POP, it pays an outright fee to guarantee Class 1 access. National Semiconductor is a DI customer. A year after signing on, the company still mirrors a few sites. Maggiore says adopting RSVP may not help all users that need high performance because end-user applications must be rewritten to work with it.
Analysts watching the hunt for better ways to improve performance see a trend emerging.
The service, which should begin commercial availability this spring, will offer customers the option of using a network-based tunnel with authentication on the customer's premises. This option would enhance performance for extranet partners because only they would have access to specific servers. Businesses looking for managed bandwidth or other techniques for high-performance Internet links to their partners, customers, and employees, won't find simple answers in 1998. There will be more working alternatives, but it will be a while before getting better Internet performance will be more a question of evaluating your business case than of finding the right technology.