Wide Area Network used to distribute the Internet to the desktop level of all Jefferson County Schools/facilities
GENERAL INFORMATION
The Jefferson County School Board (hereinafter referred to as "The Customer") intends to lease Internet services into its Central Office and, with a Wide Area Network, to distribute Internet to the desktop level of all schools and other locations as described in section 1.2 for Jefferson County School District . The Customer herewith requests proposals for these services as described in the attached specifications from interested persons (hereinafter known as "The Vendor"). The Vendor must submit a bid for all areas and show an integrated approach with respect to hardware, services and support. Prices quoted shall be all inclusive. The Customer reserves the right to reject any and all proposals, waive any technicalities, and award all or part of the contract in a manner that is in the best interest of the Jefferson County School Board. It is expected that over the term of the contract the schools will need some or all of the optional services listed in the ITB, therefore the vendor is required to provide optional prices for all of the products listed as optional.
These services will meet the Federal Communications Commission definition of “leased services” (paragraph 193 of FCC's fourth Order on Reconsideration)
All aspects of this project must comply with the Federal Communication Commission's competitive bidding requirement for Universal Service Fund (USF) support and services. The vendor must participate in the E-Rate program administered by the Schools and Libraries Division of the Universal Service Fund. The vendor must provide a SPIN number listed with the E-Rate program with the bid response.
Technical Contact
Timothy Meads
2100 18 th Street South
Birmingham Al. 35209
E-Rate Contact
Carolyn Blackwell
2100 18 th Street South
Birmingham Al. 35209
CURRENT SYSTEM AND CONNECTIVITY LOCATIONS
The Jefferson County Public School System is presently using a frame relay network with shared half duplex links to end sites. The Jefferson County Public School System is interested in a routed WAN with a connection of at least 100 Mbps NON SHARED, FULL DUPLEX to each end site, and a connection of at least 1 Gbps NON SHARED FULL DUPLEX to each aggregation and CO site. The backbone network should be of sufficient capacity to support the links to the individual sites. Redundancy should be built into the network wherever possible.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
The following is the required schedule of events for this project. The schedule may change depending on the results of the responses and a final schedule will be established prior to contracting with the successful bidder.
Event Date & Time
INTERNET CONNECTIVITY AND INTEGRATED SERVICES
INTERNET CONNECTIVITY
Internet connectivity at a MINIMUN rate of 36 Mbps delivered to a central aggregation point (Customers Central Office). Vendor must be a Universal Services Qualified Service Provider.
It is anticipated that our school district needs for additional bandwidth in the future will expand and the vendor's network must be able to accommodate these needs with easy and quick upgrades. Jefferson County Board of Education will require at least 32 Static Public IP Addresses.
WIDE AREA NETWORK CONNECTIVITY (Intrasite)
Vendor must provide, to distribute the centrally delivered Internet Connectivity, a connection of at least 100 Mbps NON SHARED FULL DUPLEX to each end site, and a connection of at least 1 Gbps NON SHARED FULL DUPLEX to each aggregation and CO site. The backbone network should be of sufficient capacity to support the links to the individual sites. Redundancy should be built into the network wherever possible. Installation must be completed at a Maximum of 9 months unless otherwise agreed by Jefferson County Board of Education and winning vendor.
Vendor must provide a perimeter firewall with sufficient capacity to protect the internal network from Internet threats. The firewall should be capable of at least 30,000 simultaneous connections and a connection rate of at least 1000 connections per second with all options and services on the firewall enabled. Failover and load balancing of multiple high-speed links to the Internet, Object/Policy based firewall management, Intrusion detection and prevention, Virus, worm, Trojan, Ad aware, Spy ware, Mal ware detection and prevention with detection signatures upgraded as necessary. Stateful packet inspection, Packet filtering VPN tunnel termination and Logging.
The device – devices must also be upgradeable to meet future needs and threats. Vendor must provide a content filter that will track, log, report, and if necessary block access by URL or content. The filter must allow the application of policies that will allow granular levels of access to different users, workstations, or groups of users or workstations. Vendor must provide an appliance, which will classify, track, log, report, and control P2P, IM, and other types of application traffic and are upgradeable to meet all future needs. The filter must allow the application of policies that will allow granular levels of access to different users, workstations, or groups of users or workstations. Jefferson County Board of Education must have access to administer firewall and content filter. The content filter must meet all CIPA requirements.
Vendor must provide an appliance to monitor and control network utilization and application performance to any one site, device, user, or application at that site so that it is not allocated a disproportionate share of the available bandwidth for the end or backbone site. Vendor's network must support the Cisco Structured Wireless – Aware Network. Vendors network must support Qos. Vendor must provide centralized configuration, management, and reporting facilities (to include the ability to use a network analysis tool such as Flukes Optiview or Protocol expert) available to both the Customer and the vendor. It is anticipated that our school district needs for additional bandwidth in the future will expand and the vendor's network must be able to accommodate these needs with easy and quick upgrades.
WAN CONFIGURATION
Vendor must provide survey, design, procurement, and configuration of WAN to provide the requested network services. This configuration includes obtaining all permits, zoning requests, and inspections required by law, statute, or ordinance. Network Services are to be installed at all of the above sites with demarc of vendor's services to be provisioned at the school on an Ethernet interface provided by the vendor at the customer's designated demark in Main Distribution Frame.
INTEGRATED SERVICE SOLUTIONS
The Vendor must provide (at no additional cost), any and all Integrated Service Solutions that are inherent functions of its network. In particular, the WAN must provide end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) for different classes of traffic using VLANs and recognition/preservation of Class of Service/Type of Service (COS/TOS) markings on packets. Traffic designated as time sensitive, such as voice and/or video, must be given priority over data traffic. The connections at the customer demarcation points must provide sufficient information for the customer to use to recognize the type of traffic and transport the voice, video or data traffic to appropriate points within their local area networks.
Reliability and availability
It is of utmost concern to the customer that the network be highly available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The vendor should therefore be prepared to guarantee the availability of the network at 99 % as calculated by the following formula.
(hours in a day) x (days in a month) x (number of sites) – (network outage time)
(hours in a day) x (days in a month) x (number of sites)
The vendor should also be prepared to guarantee the throughput of the network meets the quoted rate 99% of the time. Penalties for not achieving the guaranteed level of service will be negotiated between the customer and winning bidder before the contract is executed.
MAINTENANCE, SUPPORT SERVICES, AND TRAINING
24 X 7 PROACTIVE MONITORING SERVICES
Vendor should provide proactive monitoring of its infrastructure components to include the hours of 6 am until 6 pm. This monitoring should include all vendor equipment and the customers interconnect device in the MDF. These hours will ensure knowledge of issues, which may effect productive learning hours. This monitoring should be done “out of band” of the customers Internet connection with the vendor supplying the necessary connectivity.
TROUBLE TICKETING SERVICES
Vendor must provide trouble-ticketing system, available via a Web interface, for school technical personnel to report issues and track resolution status on current issues. The interface should
automatically record the date and time the ticket is opened or closed. The interface should also provide status of any ticket in the system as well as reporting capabilities to include failure analysis trending.
DISPATCH SERVICES
Vendor must provide dispatch support services for maintenance on its infrastructure equipment. These dispatch services should occur within 4 hours of a notified failure in an infrastructure equipment component. Vendors must have WAN Field Technicians with adequate diagnostic and repair tools to repair/replace/support:
• WAN infrastructure components
• WAN cabling, trunk and patch, fiber or copper, including termination of either medium.
• WAN Switch/Router
• Any other device for which the vendor is responsible
Vendor must also maintain an adequate local stock of spare components to ensure that the reliability and throughput guarantees can be met.
Change Control
Under no circumstances will the vendor make changes to the network without the prior approval or knowledge of the customer. This includes both hardware and software changes. Any non-emergency vendor proposed changes to the network must be approved by the customer must be submitted to the customer for approval 5 business days before implementation. Any emergency vendor proposed changes to the network must be approved by the customer before implementation. The method for communicating the proposed changes to the customer should be via e-mail or fax. The vendor should include any necessary supporting documentation and drawings with the request, including expected effect and rollback procedures should the proposed change fail. The customer must approve any maintenance done by the vendor that could or would result in an outage of the network in advance. The customer will provide the vendor with a list of customers employees authorized to approve or request changes to the network.
The vendor will not make any customer requested changes unless they are made by a person on the vendors list of employees authorized to request / approve changes to the network.
Documentation
Vendor must provide complete documentation and drawings on all aspects of the network.
Documentation and drawings on any changes to the network must be provided to the customer within 2 working days of the change being made.
TRAINING
One day of training for key people on the systems; covering the following topics:
• Support procedures and escalation processes.
• CIPA requirements and Content Filter Reporting and Monitoring.
• Messaging application administration.
• Vendor must provide a site that is dedicated to the training for its customers
• Vendor must provide a per day price quote for additional days of training