Principles
Application Response Times - The single NIH network will provide application response times acceptable to support the business need and cost effective bandwidth to satisfy the current and future networking needs of NIH users and external partners.
Rationale: The network will not be overbuilt and will be efficient. The network should be designed to provide appropriate application response times at a reasonable cost. The network should also be able to accommodate future networking needs.
Network Connectivity - The network will provide high-quality, reliable, scalable and measurable network connectivity to all sites. All mission critical sites will be engineered with fault tolerance.
Rationale: The quality of the network should be measurable and all critical sites must have back-up.
Service Level Agreements ( SLA ) - The network will meet the network service level objectives agreed upon by IT management and NIH users and external partners. The network management systems will have the capability to measure and report end-to-end network service level statistics.
Rationale: Service Level Agreements (SLAs) will be documented and network statistics and SLAs will be published to the end user community, as needed, to ensure network resources are aligned with business needs.
Open System Standards - Open system standards should be used for communication both within the enterprise and with suppliers and clients. Standard network interfaces and protocols will be defined, maintained and implemented.
Rationale: Open systems will be used where feasible and cost effective, rather than proprietary solutions.
Remote Access - The remote access network will consist of a defined set of technical options for the delivery of reliable, cost-effective, secure and ubiquitous remote access capabilities.
Rationale: Remote access will be designed and provisioned for use enterprise-wide.
