I have not outsourced a wireless installation, but I've been involved in a lot of comparable wiring RFP's lately.
Assuming that this is a full installation where the vendor is doing the wire pulls, equipment installations, etc. I might consider: 1. Delivery of coverage survey maps that include signal quality in all of the physical locations that you are expecting coverage. Be clear about how many points you're looking for in the area. After final placement of access points. 2. Compatibility tests with some set of common wireless equipment found on your campus, including tests at different rates as has been mentioned by others. 3. Period of acceptance testing from live date that includes normal student loads (maybe 30 days). When we did our wireless implementation we generated customer satisfaction surveys that were tied to a laptop checkout program to assess how effective we were. We asked people to report dead zones, etc. If you plan on doing this aggressively during the first month after installation, and market the checkout program well, you could have some sense that the network was functioning. 4. Documentation of physical placement and configuration of all access points, including appropriate labeling, cabling as builts, security configuration, etc. 5. Training on configuration and maintenance if you're not outsourcing the maintenance as well. I'd recommend phased payments terms including (equipment/software delivery, installation, training, acceptance) Warning: Short preambles configuration on our Access points gave us compatibility trouble in our first implementation. Good Luck, David Metzler Network Services The Evergreen State College 360-867-6728 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.evergreen.edu/netservices ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/cg/.
