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REQUEST FOR COUNCIL ACTION Date: 8-11-14 Item No.: 13.e ___________________________________________________________________________________ Department Approval City Manager Approval ____________________________________________________________________________________ Item Description: Network Connectivity Options: Park Facilities and Water/Sewer Stations ____________________________________________________________________________________ 1 BACKGROUND 2 At the May 12, 2014 City Council meeting, it was requested that staff bring a proposal to equip park 3 buildings and shelters with electronic door access, wireless internet access and video security systems. 4 5 At the June 9, 2014 City Council meeting, there was support to move forward on the electronic door 6 access and video security as presented that evening, but additional information and cost details regarding 7 network connectivity was requested including extensions of the city fiber network and service options 8 through local communications providers. 9 10 City staff have explored multiple options for building network connectivity and provide this preliminary 11 report of findings. 12 13 1) VPN over Internet – Comcast Business Class Internet 14 15 As a possible connection type, staff requested a budgetary proposal from Comcast for Business Class 16 Internet. Using an unsecured Internet connection, a virtual private network (VPN) connection could be 17 created between the park buildings and the city network. VPNs are a common method for establishing 18 secured connections between a remote location (typically a home or mobile user) and the internal data 19 network. The Internet connection could be data services over a cable network (like Comcast), digital 20 subscriber line (DSL) from a local exchange carrier (CenturyLink, Integra, Enventis and others) or 21 mobile broadband through a wireless communications company (Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon and others). 22 23 The primary disadvantage of VPN over Internet is the upload speed is slower than the download speed. 24 This creates an issue for IP video security cameras uploading data to the central host server and 25 additionally viewing live camera feeds. Another disadvantage is that the Internet is an unmanaged 26 network with no quality of service (QoS) that can affect IP voice systems. And issues that affect the 27 Internet in other parts of the United States (primarily Internet routing) can affect the VPN connection to 28 the facilities. For water utility systems, an extended network outage could create significant issues unless 29 a backup system is made available. However this is true for any network connection. 30 31 32 33 34 35 The Comcast proposal provides the following services and costs: 36 14 Page of