Smith, Fause & McDonald, Inc.

Dublin Unified School District

Data, Voice, Video Distribution Systems for more than 50 Buildings on 7 sites

Client: Dublin Unified School District

Project Cost: 5 million Dollars

SFMI Scope of Services

• LAN, MAN, WAN Systems
• Video Distribution Systems
• Telephone Systems
• Fiberoptic Infrastructure Metropolitan Network
• Large Screen Displays and Projection Systems

Project Description

The District retained SFMI in 1996 to review contractors' bid proposals on the District Telecommunications project and to further negotiate fee issues with contractors. The bids received were $2 to $20 million over the projected cost which was based on design and bid specifications prepared twice by two separate firms.   Part of SFMI's scope was to restructure the design so that the project could be built within District's $5 million technology budget.

Upon SFMI's review and findings, the District rejected previous designs and awarded SFMI the contract to redesign the entire project.  This included reevaluation of Districts technology needs and goals, cost estimates, feasibility study and design, bid and construction administration of the communications infrastructure and districtwide communications systems for four elementary schools, a middle school and large high school and the district offices and Corporation yard. At the conclusion of SFMI's efforts, the entire project is now being implemented within District's $5 million budget.

Site infrastructure: Installed systems include seven Cat5 data drops, two telephone drops and two MATV receptacles in every classroom at every site. Administrative, library media centers and computer labs were similarly wired.  Each site is internally wired between buildings with hybrid (SM/MM) fiber, outside plant telephone cable and MATV coax in new and existing underground infrastructure.

MAN Infrastructure:  A 10 mile long fiber MAN delivering 12 singlemode fibers to every site from the high school (including aerial crossing of the 680 freeway) was publicly bid and built. The District was guided in becoming a pole attachment licensee with both Pacific Bell and PG&E.  SFMI is currently engaged in designing an extension of the MAN another 5 miles to incorporate expanded District boundaries.

Data Systems

Four receptacles in every classroom are served with segmentable, SNMP managed 10 Base-T.  Each aggregate of shared 10 Base-T hubs, including buildings, computer labs and similar high density use is served with an isolated switched 10 Base-T.  Two Novell Intranetware file servers at each site deliver educational and administrative applications.  One server provides administrative services and hosts local e-mail traffic; the second server is oriented to student services and is connected with switched 100Base-T.  A second 100 Mbps have connected each site to the District Network across the fiber MAN.  Similar Intranetware servers are replicating to one another across the MAN, both at the directory level (NDS) and for applications.  The District facilities (hosted at the high school) including two CD-ROM towers, and 147 gigabyte DAT backup autoloader, the master GroupWise hub and SMTP gateway, the District Web Server, a Novell Border Manager proxy server and Internet firewall, async dial-in ports for both modem pooling/remote access and dedicated e-mail access, a fax server integrated with GroupWise. The District facility is switched by a pair of Cisco 3200 Layer 3 switches with an aggregate 3.2 Gbps backplane with routers provided to filter student access from the District minicomputer and to provide Internet access across a T-1 span. HP Openview, Novell ManageWise and Ciscoworks management consoles were provided. System is also used to provide Districtwide Union Catalog/Library Automation system.

Voice Systems

Districtwide networked Mitel telephone switch is distributed over the fiber MAN. Shared voicemail and autoattendent provides individual and group mailboxes to every teacher, administrator and employee.  The telephone switch also frontends the async ports serving the data systems above, sharing their port requirements with those of all other users. Site specific 911 ANI identifies the dialing site in the event of an emergency. Toll fraud protection monitors all voice traffic.

MATV and Large Screen Display

Broadband television with reverse channel origination capabilities flow through every site.  Each classroom is wired to display either to a large screen monitor or a ceiling mounted video projector and is equipped with a VCR.  Displays for each room are currently being bid. With the finished system, it will be possible to display computer generated materials from a classroom presentation station or to show videotapes, cable television, or video programs generated elsewhere on campus and distributed over the MATV system.

Metropolitan Area Network

SFMI has also designed a ten mile fiber Metropolitan Area Network to connect seven complete campuses.

Meeting District's Budget and Needs

SFMI's design produced bids that came in within District's original budget. Our work not only saved the Client millions of dollars in fees, it provided them with higher quality of equipment as well as significantly enhanced capabilities relative to those previously designed by other two firms.