Data Communications Services

The vendor is required to provide data communications is defined as the products and services that provide the technological capabilities to transmit, receive, and manage digital information through information technology networks.
- Provide all aspects of data communications capabilities in a holistic solution, that includes hardware, software, and services, to develop, establish, maintain, secure, and expand data communications networks.
- Solutions to be provided consisting of, but not limited to, the following common data communication fields:
•    Networking: the infrastructure and systems that enable connectivity and data transfer, including routers, switches, network management and network optimization tools. 
•    Unified communications: data communications products and technologies that integrate various communications to provide the capability of exchanging digital information seamlessly including, but not limited to, voice, video, and text and other forms of media. 
•    Wireless networking: technologies that enable data communication over wireless mediums, including wi-fi access points, wireless controllers, and related management tools. 
•    Security: solutions that ensure confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data and network resources, including firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention systems, encryption technologies, and secure access controls. 
•    Facilities management: products and technologies that provide digital capabilities to manage, monitor, and control various facilities functions utilizing access control systems, security and surveillance, energy and climate control, alert and emergency response systems, etc.
- Data communications: hardware
1. Networking: routers
•    Branch routers ― a multiservice router typically used in branch offices or locations with limited numbers of users and supports flexible configurations and feature.
•    Network edge routers ― a specialized router residing at the edge or boundary of a network. 
•    This router ensures the connectivity of its network with external networks, a wide area network or the internet. 
•    An edge router uses an external border gateway protocol, which is used extensively over the internet to provide connectivity with remote networks. 
•    Core routers – high performance, high speed, low latency routers that enable enterprises to deliver a suite of data, voice, and video services to enable applications such as internet protocol television (IPTV) and video on demand (VOD), and software as a service (SaaS). 
•    Service aggregation routers ― provides multiservice adaptation, aggregation and routing for ethernet and IP and MPLS networks to enable service providers and enterprise edge networks simultaneously host resource-intensive integrated data, voice and video business and consumer services. 
•    Carrier ethernet routers ― high performance routers that enable service providers to deliver a suite of data, voice, and video services to enable next-generation applications such as IPTV, video on demand (VOD), and software as a service (SaaS).
b. Networking: switches
•    Campus local area network LAN – access switches ― provides initial connectivity for devices to the network and controls user and workgroup access to internetwork resources. 
•    Campus LAN – core switches ― campus core switches are generally used for the campus backbone and are responsible for transporting large amounts of traffic both reliably and quickly. 
•    Campus distribution switches ― collect the data from all the access layer switches and forward it to the core layer switches. 
•    Traffic that is generated at layer 2 on a switched network needs to be managed or segmented into virtual local area networks (VLANs), distribution layer switches provide the inter-VLAN routing functions so that one VLAN can communicate with another on the network. 
•    Distribution layer switches provide advanced security policies that can be applied to network traffic using access control lists (ACLS).
•    Data center switches ― data center switches, or layer 2/3 switches, switch all packets in the data center by switching or routing good ones to their final destinations, and discard unwanted traffic using access control lists (ACLS) a minimum of 10 gigabit speeds. 
•    High availability and modularity differentiate a typical layer 2/3 switch from a data center switch. 
•    Ability to remotely disable and enable individual ports. 
•    Support “NetFlow” or equivalent. 
•    Jumbo frame supports EVPN over MPLS or BGP (9k bytes), plug and play fabric formation. 
•    ultra-low latency through wire-speed ports with nanosecond port-to-port latency and hardware- based inter-switch link (ISL) trucking. 
•    carrier aggregation switches ― carrier aggregation switches route traffic in addition to bridging (transmitted) layer 2/ethernet traffic that are designed for ethernet networks that support video and high-bandwidth applications. 
•    Supports a variety of interface types, especially those commonly used by service providers. 
•    carrier ethernet access switches – a carrier ethernet access switch can connect directly to the customer or be utilized as a network interface on the service side to provide layer 2 services. 
•    MPLS and ethernet-based wan solutions – modern, scalable wan technologies replacing legacy SONET networks. 
•    Switch features and capabilities – the following list includes desired features and capabilities as necessary for the appropriate switch, as applicable:
o    Security features: sshv2 (secure shell version 2), 802.1x (port-based network access control), port security, DHCP (dynamic host configuration protocol) snooping, two-factor or multi-factor authentication (2fa/MFA), MacSec encryption, role-based access control lists (ACL)
o    Fast ethernet/gigabit ethernet - 802.3bz (multi-gig interfaces 2.5gbps and 5 GBPS) 
o    1/10/25/40/100/400 GBPS support 
o    POE (power over ethernet) - up to 90/95w on all ports 
o    Port mirroring 
o    Span taps 
o    Support of ipv6 and ipv4 
o    Swappable powerlines and fans 
o    AC or dc power supply minimum dc input ranging from 18v to 32 vdc and 36v to 72 vdc 
o    Switch-port auto recovery 
o    Dynamic trucking protocol (DTP) 
o    Per-Vlan rapid spanning tree (PVRST+) 
o    IGP (interior gateway protocol) routing, including non-proprietary such as is-is, OSPF, IBGP 
o    EGP (exterior gateway protocol) routing, including border gateway protocol (BGP) 
o    VPLS (virtual private LAN service) support 
o    VRRP (virtual router redundancy protocol) support
c. Networking: storage
•    Storage area network (SAN): these devices are high-speed and specialize in block-level storage for data centers. 
•    This solution is protocol-independent and can be FIBRE channel (FC), FCOE or similar San topology for private cloud storage in virtualized environments. 
•    Network attached storage (NAS): storage system at the file level connected to an IP network. 
•    Fabric and blade server switches: a Fibre channel switch is a network switch compatible with the Fibre channel (fc) protocol. 
•    It allows the creation of a FIBRE channel fabric, which is currently the core component of most sans. 
•    The fabric is a network of FIBRE channel devices, which allows many-to-many communication, device name lookup, security, and redundancy. 
•    FC switches implement zoning; a mechanism that disables unwanted traffic between certain fabric nodes.
d. Optical networking
•    Core DWDM (dense wavelength division multiplexing) switches ― switches used in systems designed for long haul and ultra-long-haul optical networking applications. 
•    Edge optical switches ― provide entry points into the enterprise or service provider core networks. 
•    Optical network management ― provides capabilities to manage the optical network and allows operators to execute end-to-end circuit creation. 
•    IP over DWDM (IPODWDM) ― a device utilized to integrate IP routers and switches in the OTN (optical transport network).