National Library of Medicine, Office of Acquisitions Management, Building 38A, Room B1N17, 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, Maryland 20894

D -- TESTING OF INTERNET CONNECTIVITY SOL NLM 98-097/LTN DUE 091098 POC Liem T. Nguyen, Contract Specialist, 301-496-6546 The National Library of Medicine (NLM) intends to fund follow-on work to be performed by FORTHNet, SA, Heraklion, Crete, Greece, to further extend and refine the testing of Internet connectivity previously conducted for NLM. The FORTHNet methodology uses a variety of Internet performance metrics and methods to monitor the bulk transfer capacity, round trip time, packet loss, preferred network routing, number of hops, and route stability of the Internet pathways being tested. In the follow-on work, NLM is requiring the vendor to use its methodology to conduct additional testing of NLM web sites and up to 25 other international Internet pathways between the vendor site and selected locations in various regions of the world. The pathways selected will include those tested in the previous work, to provide direct comparability of results over time, and additional pathways in other geographic areas to provide comparability among regions. Because of the vendor's prior efforts to test response times for NLM web sites and other international Internet pathways, and the need to directly compare follow-on test results with prior results, FORHTNet, SA, is the only source who can successfully meet the follow-on requirements within the required time schedule. Any other source would have to duplicate the efforts already made by FORHTNet, SA. This is a sole source acquisition. This is not a Request for Quotations (RFQ) nor is an RFQ available. ***** Posted 08/25/98 (W-SN241550). (0237)

Loren Data Corp. http://www.ld.com (SYN# 0037 19980827\D-0011.SOL)