Project name: PISD School LAN/WAN VPN Project Name and address of Client: 5400 Legacy Drive, Plano TX 75024 Client Contact Person: Mr. H. Lee Smith, 214 604 6478 Period of contract: 15 months Description of services provided:

GECII teamed with EDS Corporation, as a subcontractor, for the design implementation and rollout of an integrated voice and data Wide Area Network, WAN, for the Plano Independent School District, PISD. The District consisted of 54 schools (Elementary, Middle and High Schools) that needed to be internetworked.

GECII launched the project with the performing a detailed inventory of the communications and computing infrastructure at each of the 54 schools and performing a preliminary conceptual design of LANs and a broadband virtual private network (VPN) wide area network, WAN, that would interconnect all the schools to share scarce resources among all stakeholders and provide communications with the external world through a single managed portal. The backbone design was based on SONET facilities leased from SBC (now AT&T) for the project and broadband routers at each school node..

GECII designed each individual LAN as Ethernet based with LAN applications running off a Microsoft Exchange Server on Dell hardware and with Compaq workstations and defined and implemented interfaces between legacy systems that were top continue being utilized with the new platform.

The school WAN VPN facilitated interschool communications, hosted applications for cafeteria and state meal plans, offered internet access to every student, provided home access to student records for parents and students alike. The WAN also provided external connectivity through a single portal to the State educational network, TENET, to in-district and out-of-district library services featuring both data and VoIP communications.

GECII was subcontracted to perform equipment staging, application testing, hardware and software implementation and commissioning and subsequently participated in user training on the new system.