Specifications include, but are not limited to: Respondent must provide a direct geographical path from Knoxville to the Ashburn metropolitan area. Transit through other metropolitan areas such as Atlanta, Nashville, or Chicago is to be avoided. Respondent must describe current routing platform in use and planned for the next three years, provide information regarding existing network footprint, and planned network build-out. Examples include hardware platforms, site interconnections, etc. Respondent must provide information on maintenance and support operations for both technical difficulties and individual users. This information should include an organizational chart of regional offices supporting UTK and the escalation process for UTK to follow. Respondent to provide an overview of the account team and support team structure: Echeloned support levels available, their responsibilities, and contact information. UTK requires 24x7x365 support to include access to engineering services. Customer support services. Procedure(s) for incident reporting and escalation. Procedure(s) for scheduling and performing provider-initiated maintenance. Procedure(s) for providing a mean time to repair. Description of service level agreements (SLA). Bidder to provide an overview of service turn-up/activation process prior to implementation. UTK expects scheduling of turn-up and maintenance activities during non-business hours. UTK will adhere to IEEE and other industry standards and expects the Bidder to do the same. Respondent must identify any third parties that will be providing products or services to UTK or respondent in relation to this project. Respondent must provide a detailed map of their national network footprint, physical path proposed/quoted, and expected performance metrics. Depending on the location, equipment, and distances necessary to cross-connect equipment, the university may use LC fiber optic connector, with an LR4 transceivers for connections up to 100Gbps. Respondent must specify preferred optic and necessary connector. Respondent to provide an overview of the process for upgrading service throughput for increased speeds (e.g. from 10Gbps to 20 Gbps). Respondent to provide an overview of the process to perform adds, moves, and changes for both logical and physical requirements.
