Burstable Fibre compared to a Guaranteed Fibre Internet Connection
A few weeks ago I wrote about a new 10 Mbps Burstable Fibre Internet service, available throughout most of Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton. We received lots of responses, with many asking how a Burstable Fiber service compares to an Internet connection with Guaranteed Bandwidth.
Burstable fiber traffic is assigned a lower priority within our network than guaranteed fibre traffic. In the unlikely event that there is congestion between your site and our network core, burstable traffic gives way to guaranteed traffic. As such, the service level for the performance parameters (latency, jitter, packet loss) within our network is a business class “reasonable effort“. It is important to know that we do not pass this distinction on to our upstream providers. Telus, Bell, Level 3 and the over 100 companies we peer with in Vancouver and Seattle treat burstable fibre traffic identical to guaranteed fiber traffic.
For a quick comparison, both our Guaranteed and Burstable fibre services offer the following, as part of our SLA (or Service Level Agreement).
- Circuit availability: 99.9%
- Mean Time To Repair: 4 hours
- On-Time Delivery
However our Guaranteed or Committed services also include…
- Round trip delay within Canada up to 3500 KM: < 85 ms, within Canada over 3500 KM: < 115 ms
- Packet loss: Monthly average < 0.1%
- Jitter: Monthly average: no more than 10 ms
It is also important to note that often we can easily upgrade a Burstable 10 Mbps connection to a Guaranteed service, without “rolling a truck” for a site visit.
In a nutshell, our Burstable services offer a higher level of service within our network than broadband connections like ADSL or Cable, are less expensive than guaranteed services, and can be easily upgraded to a guaranteed service for those BC and Alberta business that require higher performance.
Chris Miles | 604 484 5257 | cmiles@skywaywest.com