1. Introduction

Many organizations concerned with K-12 educational issues and the planning for the use of technology recognize the value of data communications throughout the educational system. State sponsored documents such as the California Department of Education's "Strategic Plan for Information Technology" recommend the planning of voice, video and data networks to support learning and educational administration, but they do not provide specific technical direction.

The institutions that built the Internet and connected early in its development are early adopters of technology, with technical staff dedicated to the planning for and implementation of leading edge technology. The K-12 community traditionally has not had this level of staffing available for telecommunications planning. This document is intended to bridge that gap and provides a recommended technical direction, an introduction to the role the Internet now plays in K-12 education and technical guidelines for building a campus data communications infrastructure that provides internetworking services and connections to the Internet.

For a more general introduction to the Internet and its applications and uses, the reader is referred to any of the references listed in the following RFCs:

   1392(-> 1983fyi18)    "Internet Users' Glossary" (also FYI 18)
   1432    "Recent Internet Books"
   1462fyi20    "What is the Internet" (also FYI 20)
   1463fyi19    "Introducing the Internet - A Short Bibliograpy of
           Introductory Internetworking on Readings for the Network
           Novice" (also FYI 19)