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Can anyone tell me what is SLA and how it works ?

Edited by alex.siru
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Two different meanings of "SLA" are relevant on a networking forum and both appear in this thread: the contractual Service Level Agreement that and referred to, and the router-level "IP SLA" (active probe) feature vendors use to measure network performance. The contractual SLA is about measurable commitments and remedies; the IP SLA is an on-device test that measures things like latency, jitter and packet loss for monitoring or automated decisions. (techtarget.com)

Practical checklist for a contractual SLA (what belongs in the text, not legalese): clearly defined SLOs (for example, availability as a percent, latency as a percentile), the exact measurement method and vantage point (where and how measurements are taken), reporting cadence and format, maintenance windows and exceptions, escalation paths and contact info, and remedies or credits for breaches. Express metrics so they are measurable (eg, "95th-percentile latency measured at provider edge, sampled every 5 minutes") and include an OLA or underpinning contract if internal teams/third parties support delivery. (techtarget.com)

Router-level notes and a quick IP SLA example: IP SLA operations can be ICMP-echo, UDP-jitter, TCP-connect, HTTP, etc., and are commonly used for performance monitoring and route failover when combined with track. Example Cisco IOS snippet (minimal):

ip sla 1
 icmp-echo 8.8.8.8 source-interface GigabitEthernet0/0
 frequency 10
ip sla schedule 1 life forever start-time now

track 1 ip sla 1 reachability

Useful show commands: show ip sla summary, show ip sla statistics, show track. Use track to trigger route changes or alerts based on probe reachability. (cisco.com)

Troubleshooting and best practice bullets: baseline before committing numbers; confirm probes are not blocked by firewall/ACLs; set probe frequency low enough to avoid device CPU impact; always specify source-interface or source-ip to avoid asymmetric routing confusion; feed results to an NMS (use CISCO-RTTMON-MIB) for long-term reporting; keep SLAs realistic and review them periodically. (cisco.com)

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Member Avatar for happygeek

Do you mean a Service Level Agreement or something else? That's the only SLA I know offhand, to be honest. The definition is pretty much what it says on the tin: a contract between you and your service provider which lays out the terms of service delivery, what you can expect, what the guarantees are and what happens if those delivery levels are not met.

Edited by happygeek
Member Avatar for Harry_10

A service-level agreement (SLA) is defined as an official commitment that prevails between a service provider and the customer.

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