ARE-ON expects to achieve the following goals (at minimum) through the selected vendor(s): Each circuit shall provide a Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) through a Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) network with Layer 2 Ethernet connectivity between the endpoints. Each circuit shall be provisioned as an ethernet data circuit with a logical Layer 2 Virtual Private Network (L2VPN) connection between the A-Endpoints and the Z-Endpoint. The speed of network traffic over each circuit shall be fully symmetric, that is, able to sustain transmission of data to the full capacity of the provisioned circuit in both directions simultaneously. Vendors shall not oversubscribe the bandwidth of any physical circuit to an endpoint. That is, the bandwidth provided by a physical circuit must be at least the total of the bandwidth of all logical circuit(s) provisioned over the physical circuit. All circuits will terminate into an appropriate demarcation point to a customer-owned CPE device. That is, the demarcation point for each circuit shall be the Ethernet hand-off to the CPE device at each endpoint. The physical connections at the demarcation point at the A-Endpoints (i.e., the hand-off to the college-owned CPE router) shall be 10 Gbps Ethernet utilizing single mode fiber with 10km optics. The physical connections at the demarcation point at the Z-Endpoints (i.e., the hand-off to the ARE-ON owned CPE router at the ARE-ON POPs) shall be 10Gbps Ethernet single mode fiber with 10km optics. If multiple logical circuits are provisioned over a single physical circuit, such as at one of the ARE-ON POPs, each logical circuit shall be broken out and presented as a separate physical Ethernet link to the customer-owned CPE device. All circuits shall support transmission of Ethernet jumbo frames with a payload of up to 9,000 bytes in size. All circuits shall support 802.1Q (or dot1Q) tunneling, that is, the customer’s ability to define and preserve VLAN tags on frames transmitted over the circuit without the vendor’s provisioning or intervention. All vendor-installed equipment at the A-Endpoints shall be powered with 120 VAC. All vendor-installed equipment at the Z-Endpoints (ARE-ON POP locations) shall be powered with -48 VDC with dual A&B power supplies.
