Office of the Chief Information Officer

United States Department of Agriculture

Network

An image of bundled wires

 

Industry Standard Installations

 

 

 

 

 

Service Description

Service includes installation, maintenance, and troubleshooting of wiring and network equipment items such as routers, switches and Wireless Access Points (WAP). This service includes the management of WAN circuits that connect the local office to the UTN. Network also covers the management, troubleshooting and maintenance of the local router and WAN Accelerator along with network capacity monitoring. This service includes access to the internet. Secure Network Connection provides customers with the ability to access their files and other resources in a secure network connection while not having to be directly connected to the USDA backbone.

What is included

  • Connectivity to the USDA Universal Telecommunications Network.
  • Internet Access.
  • Facilities wiring that meet current industry standards.
  • Troubleshooting equipment and cable infrastructure.
  • Installation of Network (LAN/WAN) equipment i.e. switches and routers.
  • Workstation and peripherals setup and integration on the LAN/WAN.
  • Access to the USDA Web Farms
  • Network security and capacity monitoring.
  • Secure network connection.
  • VPN solution and two-factor authentication.
  • WAN Optimization

How We Charge

The number of wired offices per client is the basis for the direct charge to the client for LAN. WAN Services are billed on a per circuit basis with equipment being purchased by the customer from ITS. Internet access charge is the number of active directory accounts, which is the basis for charges direct to the client.

Service Level Metrics

Measure Target SLA
Availability of logical circuits between UTN node pairs  99.5%
Availability of ENS + ITS Internet Gateways (UTN) internet access for connected offices/end users 99.9%
ACS Server + VPN Concentrators + Internet Gateway

[Total Time – STotal Outage] / Total Time

99%

Cost Savings Tips

  • Monitoring of devices helps to keep numbers balanced to users.
  • The consolidation of offices into a single location where costs can be shared.

Additional Information

  • LAN availability will be measured by SolarWinds.
  • UTN is a required USDA Enterprise Service and is provided by Enterprise Network Services (ENS).
  • The measurement is determined by the rolling average over the previous twelve months as reported by the network monitoring tool SolarWinds.
  • These services are included in all Platform Services.