Department of Veterans Affairs, Acquisition Operations Service (93C), 810 Vermont Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20420-0000

D -- TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES DUE 071197 POC Laura Zotian (202)273-8091; James Shumate (202)273-8115 Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) requests information/comments from Industry about replacing the existing VA Wide Area Network. VA anticipates a procurement for replacement of its Integrated Data Communications Utility (IDCU) Wide-Area Network by July 1998. The IDCU is a "utility" type service to VA agencies. It provides connectivity, capacity, and network support for the entire department. Current plans call for a competitive solicitation for full service, single source, netwrok service manager. It is anticipated that the network service manager willl employ one or more transport suppliers as well as commercially available network management services. Information about the Wide Area Network Services Requirements follows: The new WAN must b3e designed to support the current users in much the same "utility" concept presently provided ()i.e., the customer can order any service desired -- not limoited to a pre-selected subset). It should be capable of providing flexible, secure enhancements to satisy the rapidly growing needs of the users, while utilizing cost effective technologies that will emerge in the anticipated 10-year system life cycle. The IDCU Wide Area Network (WAN) supports about 365 VA sites, located throughout the 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. The IDCU currently consists primarily of X.25 and Frame Relay service support, with the majority of new services and traffic increases being satisfied by Frame Relay. The IDCU network carries approximately 225 GB per month of Frame Relay traffifc. Total traffic is estimated to grow to 6,000 GB per month by the year 2000, and could expand to 15,000 GB by the year 2010. The existing X.25 packet switching backbone service supports asynchronous terminal to host traffic, SNA, SDLC, 800 dial-up, Honeywell, Micom, Jupiter, Comten, Migration Gateway Service (MGW), and VA-owned router traffic. The network hardware consists of approximately 500 router ports, 160 non-router ports, 6,500 asynchronous ports300 SDLC ports, and 180 MGW ports supporting data raes from 1.2 Kbps to Tis. There are four X.25 backbone switch nodes with T1 connectivity in Washington, DC; Austin, TX, Hines, IL; and Philadelphia, PA. There are approximately 42 X.25 tributary switches150 trunks, and 2,000 access lines. it is expected that these protocols may change during the life of the contract. The current Frame Relay network consists of T1 service links comprising 26 switches, 50 trunk lines between switches, and approximately 236 Service Access Points. The Frame Relay implementation began in 1995 and is growing very rapidly. Network Management services consist of: Performance, Fault, Configuration, Security, and Accounting Management; Network Operations, Administration, Customer Support (including help desk), and Emergency Management; Program and Life Cycle Management; and Reporting, Training, and Documentation support. (0175)

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