County Durham and Darlington Fire and Rescue Authority (CDDFRA) wish to

engage with an ICT network provider to deliver and manage a resilient Wide Area

Network (WAN), Centralised Firewall and Internet Provision to support all the

Authority's business needs. The Authority has 19 sites, which need to be

interconnected via a resilient core network.

County Durham and Darlington Fire and Rescue Authority (CDDFRA) wish to

engage with an ICT network provider to deliver and manage a resilient Wide Area

Network (WAN), Centralised Firewall and Internet Provision to support all the

Authority's business needs. The Authority has 19 sites, which need to be

interconnected via a resilient core network. There are, however two fire stations

that have separate accommodation blocks (included in the existing provision)

which are serviced via independent ADSL links direct to the internet which do not

transverse the WAN. The types of data carried by the WAN varies, but includes

but is not limited to: Voice, Video, Mobilisation and Citrix. End users and third

party suppliers access the WAN via a VPN solution provided by the existing

Managed Service. CDDFRA utilise the existing WAN to deliver mobilisation

messages (GD92) to the remote fire stations, although this traffic is small in size it

is mission critical and must be prioritised over all other types of traffic, therefore

the WAN needs to be highly available. Some other types of traffic that transverse

the WAN are: Data, Citrix, Voice, Video, and Mapping Updates. CDDFRA also

use the WAN for the telephony system and Quality of Service (QoS) is applied to

all voice traffic to ensure audible speech.