Service Advisor can compile statistics about the circuits in individual customer networks and generate reports. The upgrade is an improvement over Visual's former software that only put out monthly reports. Service Advisor reports on round-trip delay, packet loss and availability. Included are a view of each virtual circuit, throughput relative to the guaranteed bandwidth and frames delivered above and below that bandwidth. The reports give the current statistics and a two-week history of network performance.
Carriers can make the report screens available to customers via a secure Web interface.
Va. For instance, the report screen should clearly post all of the SLAs the carrier has agreed to, he says. The largest ACE to date handles only a single T-1. For carriers, Visual is also introducing a probe that monitors traffic between the frame relay switches in one carrier's network and those in another carrier's. Carriers will be able to use the information to tell customers whom to contact when there is a problem on frame links that span carrier networks. Service Advisor will be available early next year as a standard issue with new Visual Uptime software or as a free upgrade for current customers with service contracts.