Service Alerts (1 New)

Wireless and Wired Public Internet Access

Service Level Agreement

Information Technology Services
The University of Texas at Austin
Effective Date: 5/1/2009

Score

Rate Service Rate Service
Customer Satisfaction Score Customer rating bar graph of 3.9 3.9


Service Manager Score Service Manager rating bar graph of 5.0 5.0


Overview

The purpose of this document is to ensure customers have a clear understanding of the support Information Technology Services (ITS) provides for the Public Network (wireless/wired) service. This document defines the service, service delivery expectations, availability, maintenance windows, and the responsibilities of ITS support staff as well as customers.

Review Process

This document defines the practices that ITS will use for the Public Network service. The details of this document may be reviewed and amended as required, or at least annually, to accurately reflect business and service needs.

Time Conventions

Unless otherwise indicated, business hours are from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, excluding holidays and reduced schedule days.

Scope

The following user communities at the university are the intended recipients for the Public Network service: Students, Faculty, Staff, Other (official visitors).

Service Criticality

This service has been identified as Very Important, based on the ITS Critical Services Assessment Criteria. Please refer to the Critical Services Assessment Criteria for more information on the assessment methodology.

Service Description

The Public Network provides authenticated access to network connectivity across university facilities and to the worldwide Internet, as well as a default allocation of bandwidth for each authorized user. Bandwidth limits are adjusted periodically and can be found on the ITS Web site.

Components that form the Public Network and provide the basis for its SLA include:

  1. The Campus Network (covered in the Campus Network SLA), which connects buildings to the Internet;
  2. The wireless core: Central wireless control and switching equipment;
  3. AAA : Central authentication, authorization, and accounting services; and
  4. Edge devices : Network equipment typically located in the building where the user is located. These include wireless access points and switches that support end users.

Supported Computing Environment

The Wireless Public Network supports 802.11b/g, and possibly 802.11a/n depending on the location, and TCP/IP version 4 (except multicast). Authentication via 802.1x is required for access by Students, Faculty, Staff and Official Visitors (PEAP/MSCHAPv2, TTLS, and TLS (July 2009)). Authentication by Guests and non-802.1x supported devices requires Web re-direct mechanisms, which require both cookies and pop-ups enabled in the browser for the authentication.pna.utexas.edu domain.

The Wired Public Network currently supports Ethernet 10/100Base-T and TCP/IP version 4. Authentication is required via Web re-direct mechanisms, which require both cookies and pop-ups enabled in the browser for the authentication.pna.utexas.edu domain.

For the latest information on tested systems and a complete list of supported procedures, refer to the ITS Web site: https://www.utexas.edu/its/network/.

Technical Support

End users communicate with Tier 1 support, which may escalate to Tier 2 support.

Tier 1 Support

Local IT support personnel, or if not known the ITS Help Desk at 512-475-9400 or by e-mail.

Tier 2 Support

Local IT support personnel and the ITS Help Desk escalate to ITS Networking.

Service Availability

This section provides information about the normal schedule of times when the service is available, the times specified for scheduled maintenance, and defines expectations for reporting service problems and changes.

Normal Service Availability

24 X 7 X 365

Scheduled Maintenance

Scheduled maintenance for the Public Network service is essential to ensure reliable, secure, and high performance operations.

Wireless Core and AAA Maintenance:
  1. Maintenance that causes simultaneous campus-wide outages is scheduled during Campus Network maintenance windows, which are announced five months in advance. These occur on Sunday mornings from 8 to 11 a.m., during or close to semester inter-sessions (fall, winter, summer).
  2. Maintenance that causes sporadic outages is scheduled outside business hours with 5 days notice. These outages are brief (<15 minutes) and may affect a small number of buildings simultaneously, but could cover all of campus over time as new settings are propagated across campus.
  3. Emergency maintenance may be scheduled any time to repair failing services or address critical security vulnerabilities. When possible these are scheduled outside business hours.
Edge Device Maintenance:
  1. Regular maintenance will occur during the Wireless Core/AAA maintenance windows described above.
  2. Building-wide maintenance may also be scheduled with local IT support personnel at any time.
  3. Maintenance of individual edge devices may take place during business hours. Typically, few end users will be affected and the outages will be brief (limited impact).

Problem Reporting and Change Notification

Wireless Core and AAA Maintenance:

  1. Any fundamental changes by ITS Networking affecting authentication and authorization to the Public Networks will be reviewed in advanced with the IT community with the goal of supporting most systems in use on campus.
  2. For regularly scheduled maintenance, ITS will notify customers using the ITS Services Status page of service availability and service delivery issues for the Public Network. To the maximum extent possible, service, application, and security updates that will affect end-users will be performed during scheduled maintenance.
  3. For emergency maintenance, in addition to the ITS Services Status page, ITS will also notify the it-updates e-mail list as soon as the maintenance has been scheduled.

Edge Device Maintenance:

  1. For regularly scheduled maintenance see above.
  2. For specific building-wide Edge Device maintenance, ITS will notify local building IT support personnel if building-wide outages are expected, and rely on them to notify their building occupants. There will be no notification for individual device outages (limited in impact).

Key Service Indicators

List of Metrics/Measures

Campus Network: see Campus Network SLA

Wireless Core:

  1. Wireless Core services will be available 99.9% of the time (potentially up to 8 hours of downtime per year). Excludes: scheduled maintenance, loss of a Network Operations Center, and campus-wide disasters.

AAA:

  1. 802.1x wireless authentication systems will be available 99.9% of the time (potentially up to 8 hours of downtime per year). Excludes scheduled maintenance and campus-wide disasters.
  2. Web-redirect wireless and wired authentication systems will be available 99.75% of the time (potentially 22 hours of downtime per year). Excludes scheduled maintenance and campus-wide disasters.
  3. Accounting (access to bandwidth usage and purchases) will be available 99% of the time (potentially 3.5 days of downtime per year). Excludes scheduled maintenance and campus-wide disasters.

Edge Devices:

  1. Due to utilization of un-regulated wireless spectrum and distributed funding, there are no service level agreements associated with Edge Devices for the Public Network. However, service levels are monitored and reported. Response to monitored or reported problems with Edge Devices is "as available."
  2. Average user experience is quantified and will be reported yearly. A distributed monitoring system simulates user activity and measures resulting system availability in over 50 locations across campus.
  3. Wireless grades are assigned to buildings that provide an expectation for overall wireless quality in a building. The grades are available on the campus wireless coverage maps (summer 2009). The grades are derived from a number of measures including wireless access points per square foot (coverage) and user load (capacity). Coverage at specific locations/times may vary.
  4. Additional measures are available for local building IT support staff including Edge Device availability and utilization.

Dependencies

Campus Network:

  1. Network Operations Centers, which require power/cooling
  2. Campus fiber optic media plant, which relies on the underground tunnel and duct bank systems
  3. For the Pickle Research Center campus, the Greater Austin Area Telecommunication Network fiber media system
  4. External carrier links to off-campus sites (Internet)

Wireless Core and AAA:

  1. Network Operations Centers, which require power/cooling
  2. Campus Network
  3. The Enterprise Directory for real-time updates; AAA will continue to work without updates

Edge Devices:

  1. Campus Network
  2. Wireless Core and AAA Services
  3. Local building facilities (telecommunications closets, power, and cooling).
  4. Local building cabling plants
  5. Local building network infrastructure

Service Report Card

ITS will publish performance for this service in the public Campus Network Status Report. Local IT support personnel may view private availability reports through the ITS provided network utilities.

Other Party Responsibilities

In addition to the services provided by ITS, subscribers (users) of the service and identified owners/administrators agree to certain important responsibilities. All parties agree to be aware of and adhere to the university's Information Resources Use and Security Policy.

User/Subscriber Responsibilities

Subscriber agrees to:

  • Contact their local IT support staff to report network problems with specific location and time information. If they do not know who their local support staff are, they should contact the ITS Help Desk.
  • Adhere to authentication and security policies and not share their access privileges.
  • Manage and conserve bandwidth resources.

Departmental IT Support Staff

Support staff agree to:

  • Adhere to the Network Operations Manual [TBD]
  • Contact ITS Networking to report outages and seek assistance
  • Work with ITS Networking to achieve desired Public Network service levels for their buildings

Cost of Service

End users must fund external bandwidth consumption beyond their default allocations (requires additional purchases).

Departments must fund Edge Devices and portions of the Campus Network required to make the Public Network available in their building and immediate surroundings. Edge Devices typically last 3-6 years before replacement is needed due to physical age and/or diminished vendor support, and may require installation charges for the equipment or media associated with the equipment. Departments may purchase additional external bandwidth for specific users.

ITS funds the Wireless Core, AAA, and portions of the Campus Network, along with all necessary operations, management, monitoring systems and personnel.