Note: In conjunction with our remote-access buyer's guide and review, we asked The Tolly Group to help us create a remote-access RFP. We then sent this to remote-access vendors for their comments. What follows is that RFP:
Background
Abbig Corporation is looking for a networking vendor that can design and build a remote access server (RAS) solution for the central side of the corporate network. Abbig Corporation currently has 30,000 employees worldwide and over the next six months wants to enable 20% of the workforce to work remotely either part time or full time. The remote access solution should also be designed to be both fault tolerant for 99.9% uptime and secure to ensure unauthorized users are not allowed into the network. The solution should be centrally managed either through a standard or proprietary network management package and should provide network managers with a full set of usage statistics.Current Network and Applications
The current network is made up of a central office and 10 regional or branch offices. The central office has a Gigabit Ethernet backbone and is fed by many Fast Ethernet LAN switches. The corporate network officially uses only two protocols, IP and IPX, and both will be required for any remote users. There are three main categories of employees that have different application needs and will be working remotely: employees that are telecommuters, the mobile sales force and executives.-
Telecommuters use standard business applications and access the LAN for email and file transfers. Their activities are fairly low bandwidth and they generally need to access the corporate network twice a day for about 30 minutes each time.
- The mobile sales force employ standard business applications like the telecommuters, but they also use an enterprise-wide sales and inventory tracking application. The sales force needs to continuously synchronize with the central network to report their sales and receive current inventory data. They may need to connect to the central site 10 times for 10 minutes each time everyday.
- The last group, the executives, are located mainly at the corporate central site. They need to access the standard business applications, as well as sales tracking applications. Executives are only working remotely part of the time and need to access the central site on average one time per day, but generally remain connected for almost an hour each time.
- The mobile sales force employ standard business applications like the telecommuters, but they also use an enterprise-wide sales and inventory tracking application. The sales force needs to continuously synchronize with the central network to report their sales and receive current inventory data. They may need to connect to the central site 10 times for 10 minutes each time everyday.
Central Office
There are 5,000 users in the central office that use the corporate network. One thousand of the users at the central office need be able to work remotely. The breakdown of the proposed thousand remote users is as follows: 500 of the users are telecommuters, 300 are in the mobile sales force and 200 of the remote users are executives.Regional Offices
There are 10 regional offices throughout the world. The regional offices are identical in terms of their structure and staffing characteristics. Each of the 10 regional offices has 2500 employees that use the network. 500 users at each of the regional offices needs to be enabled to work remotely. There are 250 telecommuters, 240 mobile sales force and 10 executives at each regional office. Network diagramSee what Abbig's network looks like. RELATED LINKS
Network diagram
See what Abbig's network looks like.
Vendor responses:
Cabletron
Intel
Multi-Tech
Osicom
RAScom
Back to the RAS review and buyer's guide
Schiller is director of the network services practice at The Tolly Group.
