Quality of service can often be the only differentiator between hosting companies in today's competitive environment. Resellers should ensure they are providing the best services possible through Service Level Agreements with their provider.

An important component to any hosting operation is quality of service. Hosting operations must ensure that they provide reliable, quality service to their clientele to ensure their retention. The best way for resellers to make certain that they are offering the best services possible is to contract Web hosting from a higher-tier provider under the auspices of a service-level agreement.

A service-level agreement (SLA) is a contract between a carrier and a customer that defines the terms of the carrier's responsibility to that customer, and the type and extent of remuneration if those responsibilities are not met. Such an agreement commits a service provider to a pre-determined level of performance based on specific criteria. Penalties are levied if the service provider fails to meet commitments.

Previously, SLAs only applied to telecommunications carriers and data processing service providers. With the advent of the Internet, networked business applications and Web host outsourcing, the service level agreement has been extended to cover a larger array of business situations.

Web hosting consumers and Web host resellers are using SLAs to set performance standards for their network and equipment vendors. The contract works to ensure that the outsourcer is delivering the uptime, service, security and bandwidth required. At the very least, a SLA should guarantee the degree to which the network or the application is working and available.

Most service providers guarantee 99.5 percent uptime and will sometimes ensure 100 per cent network availability. The most credible and comprehensive service level agreements will specifically guarantee network latency, network packet delivery, service quality and equipment availability.

Network latency guarantees will ensure that customers will always be able to access network resources at a specific speed.

Network packet delivery guarantees ensure that data transmissions between recipient and your hosting service are sound and reliable. This is one of the most important guarantees that apply to a hosting reseller. Information on a network is divided into "packets" before it is transmitted one packet at a time. Some service providers measure the rate of network traffic based on the packets that go in and out, but they do not mention how many packets of information inadvertently are dropped along the way. It is essential that a guarantee against packet loss be incorporated into any SLA that is utilized by a reseller. Any packet loss is in fact data loss, which impacts your customers.

Resellers should also ensure that service quality is built into their SLA arrangements. Service quality guarantees attempt to build in a minimum level of technical support and customer care into a Web hosting arrangement.

Equipment availability guarantees insure that higher-tier hosting providers invest in fault-tolerance in the event of server failure.

While resellers should seek SLA arrangements for services, which they intend to furnish to their clientele, they must not envision the SLA as a panacea for all service provision issues. SLAs are complex documents, which are often complicated by specific terms.

For example, while most service providers will claim to provide 99.5 per cent network availability, many will define this availability in terms of consecutive hours. This means that if service is not available for a specified time, it might not be considered a breech of the SLA.

Because service level agreements are extremely complex documents, it is recommended that resellers review them in detail to ensure all components of their services are guaranteed against failure. Most resellers will not protect against customer-induced outages or acts of God, and these factors must be considered before signing an SLA.

Resellers should also consider the process of signing a SLA as a negotiable process, which means that SLA terms and conditions must be flexible before hosting services are purchased. Resellers must therefore examine SLAs with care by reading the fine print and doing the calculations.

Resellers should also consider whether the remedies offered by the higher-tier host are sufficient in cause of failure.