Royal Navy Museums Broadband Services

All existing broadband connections to Museum sites are provided by a single supplier. The individual Museum sites are currently interlinked via an MPLS network provided by the current supplier.

Each site has a Juniper SRX300 router installed which is managed by the current ISP. The Portsmouth HQ site has a Juniper SRX340.

Backup connections are also present at each site for redundancy, with a separate router installed and managed by the current ISP. The backup connection at the Portsmouth HQ site terminates into a separate building.

As part of the MPLS network provided by the current ISP, all sites route through a cloud firewall and have a centralised internet breakout. We are provided visibility over the cloud firewall through an online portal which allows us to view and download firewall logs and add/edit/remove inbound firewall rules for our sites as required.

Museum IT infrastructure and services are centralised at the HQ site in Portsmouth. Other sites communicate with this infrastructure to access resources over the MPLS network.

Multiple VLANs are in use across all Museums sites to support differing requirements. The Museum also has a presence in Microsoft Azure and an offsite datacentre, which is hosting a full Disaster Recovery infrastructure, but these do not form part of the existing MPLS network.

The broadband connection at the Portsmouth HQ site is currently shared between 6 separate businesses onsite, each with their own public IP address(es). The Museum also has requirements to route certain services using individual public IP addresses.

The current site connections are outlined in the document. Royal Navy Museums is evaluating different broadband options available and as part of this procurement, would like to consider two technologies that we believe can deliver the requirements of the business; MPLS and SD-WAN.

As the Museum has been operating on an MPLS network for several years, we know that this technology can deliver the requirements. SD-WAN has previously been considered but never implemented for the Museum.

The Museum is now in a position to evaluate its suitability to deliver the requirements, whilst assessing potential benefits and cost savings. This procurement has been split into two lots, representing the separate considerations for MPLS and SD-WAN.

To help the Museum make an informed decision, we would like to invite suppliers to respond to both lots and pitch solutions for both MPLS and SD-WAN. This will allow the Museum to assess the benefits, operating costs and overall suitability of the two solutions to help identify which is best able to deliver the requirements over the next 3-5 years.

Whilst we would encourage suppliers to respond to both lots to help inform our decision, Royal Navy Museums recognise that this may not be possible for all suppliers. Therefore, if a supplier is only able to offer a solution for one of the lots, we would still welcome their response.

It should be noted that, following evaluation, only one of the two lots will be awarded depending on the suitability of each solution for the Museum. Where possible, we would like all sites to be managed under a single contract.

The internal networking of our sites is out of scope of this procurement. Suppliers also do not need to include connectivity for the offsite datacentre in their proposal.

Pricing The maximum budget available for the individual lots are detailed within the individual lot requirements. Cost proposals should include any installation and equipment costs, if appropriate.

As part of your submission, please indicate when billing for services would be expected to start. Royal Navy Museums currently operates on an MPLS network for broadband services as described in section 2 and is considering keeping this arrangement for the future.

An MPLS network will need to provide inter-site connectivity for all Museum sites listed, redundancy at every layer, a centralised internet breakout, plus firewalling and management services. As part of the firewalling services, the Museum would like to have visibility over the firewall logs and rules, with the ability to add/edit/remove rules in a timely manner (such as through a secure online portal), without needing to rely on an external supplier or support teams.

It would also be useful for the internal team to have clear visibility of bandwidth usage across sites and an alerting system in place that will notify us if any circuit goes offline. It should be noted that some of our sites will require DHCP services due to a lack of local DHCP servers on those sites.

Therefore, any managed routers/firewalls deployed as part of an MPLS network will need to be capable of delivering DHCP services. Each site requires a leased line connection as the primary broadband solution, with an appropriate backup solution in place and automatic failover should the primary line fail.

The backup solution for the Portsmouth HQ site should also be a leased line. However, this should use a separate underlying telco for additional redundancy at this site.

We appreciate that backup solutions for other sites may vary, depending on the available connectivity solutions, however leased line backups are not required elsewhere. At the Portsmouth HQ site, there are multiple separate businesses sharing the broadband connection, each with a unique public IP address.

There are also several devices and networks across the Museum which require a unique public IP. As a result, the Portsmouth HQ site will require a minimum of a /27 prefix allocation to accommodate the public IP requirements.

There should be scope for us to increase this in the future, if required. Other Museum sites do not have as strict a requirement; however, they will require a minimum of 5 usable public IP addresses per site.

We are looking to increase the bandwidth available to our sites to help support the continued growth of the Museum and infrastructure changes implemented over the last few years. Individual site connections and requirements are included in the attached document.

Royal Navy Museums is considering moving away from the current MPLS setup and implementing an SD-WAN network to interlink the individual sites. For the proposed SD-WAN deployment, we would not require any centralised internet breakout, firewalling or management services that are usually associated with an MPLS network.

RNM will also supply their own firewalling and routing devices for each site and manage the configuration and maintenance of these devices through an existing relationship with an MSP. In this scenario, the Museum will configure and manage the SD-WAN network and inter-site connectivity.

Each site requires a leased line connection as the primary broadband solution, with an appropriate backup solution in place. The backup solution for the Portsmouth HQ site should also be a leased line.

However, this should use a separate underlying telco for additional redundancy at this site. We appreciate that backup solutions for other sites may vary, depending on the available connectivity solutions, however leased line backups are not required elsewhere.

At the Portsmouth HQ site, there are multiple separate businesses sharing the broadband connection, each with a unique public IP address. There are also several devices and networks across the Museum which require a unique public IP.

As a result, the Portsmouth HQ site will require a minimum of a /27 prefix allocation to accommodate the public IP requirements. There should be scope for us to increase this in the future, if required.

Other Museum sites do not have as strict a requirement; however, they will require a minimum of 5 usable public IP addresses per site. We are looking to increase the bandwidth available to our sites to help support the continued growth of the Museum and infrastructure changes implemented over the last few years.

Individual site connections are outlined in the attached document. The speeds mentioned are the minimum speeds required.

We will be happy to consider proposals that are able to exceed these speed requirements, providing suppliers are able to offer this within the proposed budget. To allow sufficient time to configure, test and schedule site changeovers to the SD-WAN implementation, the broadband lines should be installed and live as soon as possible, but no later than the 31st December 2026.