Library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

I’ve worked on major national network projects for large organisations in the public and private sectors and Jonesy is not wrong, playmates.

Just to add an alternate viewpoint…this article is indolent twaddle!.

I work with enterprise-level Cisco networks (amongst other kit) daily. If I’m buying 1000 routers I’m getting discount rates…Cisco do good discounts. I could buy 300 of 1 type…..400 of another….200 of another and the difference maybe 30% off buying the 1000 bigger boxes.

Woohoo you cry a 30% saving?!.

Wrong, sir, wrong!. You now have 3 different types of boxes to configure in hardware and software terms. 3 different trains of software with different feature sets to keep up to date with. Various modules to deliver different capabilities that may not be interoperable between router types. If you do your own support in-house you have to stock many times many more spares items with all the different power supplies, fan modules, memory strips etc, etc.

If you dont do support in-house your SMARTnet contract with Cisco is every bit more convoluted as the in-house solution is…and they will make you pay for that. 1 router type is easy to cover…1 model of power supply (and its dual mount and hot-swappable so the site should never be emergency-down from a single power supply fail…so no need for expensive 4hr turnaround times)…1 model of chassis…1 model x, y and z. Its easy to stock in the depots. So its cheap. You have 3 or 4 types of router and associated bits and its no longer easy and the price goes up.

I’ve worked on annual support contracts worth a million plus for years…and thats in £’s not $’s. If you hike up your annual support contract cost US$300k over 10yrs thats a $3mn additional expense on the bottom line. With all the bits and pieces in the network maybe you need to keep some consultant time on retainer…$100k a year at minimum…theres another $1mn over your 10yrs….and you’ve not paid out for the initial cost right-sizing or done anything to improve your network over that 10yr time yet…..

The more things are different the more things go wrong. I’ve personally seen instances of a replacement router for a site in Texas turn up in Aberdeen because some contracts muppet got confused and put a head office address into the ‘site address’ box and the vendor dutifully and unswervingly was going to send the kit to the site address on his list!. When you are trying to restore a site to operation in a 4hr agreed window that sort of thing leads to serious drinking problems.

These guys with all their nice 3945’s (and they are solid decent mid-range boxes that will be as future-proof as anything you’ll get) will have a much easier time actually living with their network day-to-day….and they’ve built in some spare capacity to try new things. If thats at the cost of a couple of hundred thousand more than they absolutely had to spend up front….then they’ve seen money well spent!

When we change PCs the hard drives are destroyed.

Hard Drives need to be securely wiped before disposal. Not in my experience…

I do a lot of this specialist company’s come to collect hard drives to dispose of them.you’ll probably fined like on the last big job i did 200+ PCs where replaced with new over three departments one only using email.
I asked about it and was told it cost a little extra to get a few more PCs and all new was a fire insurance and fraud related thing.

When I worked in the I.T. Dept of our Local Authority, we had a rolling program to replace PC’s every 3 years. e

If it is anything like the uni I used to teach at they paid a private company to dispose of the hardware as well! Staff and students weren’t allowed to get any of the disposed computers as we were told that someone could injure themselves and the university would be sued.

Even though in most cases old software was more than adequate for the level they worked at the faculty heads always insisted on the latest software even if 99% of the features were never used.

Still doing it as far as I’m aware but they did lay off a large number of staff in the last year to save money.:mad:

And then some of my bosses wanted a new title to reflect thier elevated positions. They became Senior IT Officers.v.

Posted to a unit in the RAF you couldn’t park anywhere near the place because each slot had a bloody sign o/c Sqn.. o/c a flight.. o/c b flight…. o/c crewmen, the list went on. I used to park my motorcycle in the slot on the end for o/c ttmc.. I was repeatably told to move as I would be in the poo etc… Never did, finally after being posted I told my mate to park there as he would never get asked to move, when he asked who O/C TTMC was I told him it was O/C Tony T’s Motor Cycle… I simply borrowed a sign from another squadron and repainted and stencilled it myself…. No one ever queried it or bar me parked in it 🙂

I think this Australian sports team might be more concerned – Canberra University Netball Team. Either as a team or a plural descriptive of all the members.

Have I ever told you lot the story of the Common Unified Network Topography project?

They’d got as far as having posters and mouse mats printed before anyone noticed….. 😀

And then some of my bosses wanted a new title to reflect thier elevated positions. They became Senior IT Officers.

I changed my email signature to SH IT OFFICER but there was a sense of humour failure in the department…

It’s becoming more and more apparent that the trick is to keep your head down and your mouth shut if you want a career in the public sector.

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It was ever thus – my brief flirtation with the public sector was 40 years ago and it hasn’t changed a jot. No boats shall be rocked!!:(

It’s becoming more and more apparent that the trick is to keep your head down and your mouth shut if you want a career in the public sector.

Exposing waste and inefficiency just isn’t playing the game.

Where’s the ‘like’ button? 😀

It’s becoming more and more apparent that the trick is to keep your head down and your mouth shut if you want a career in the public sector.

Exposing waste and inefficiency just isn’t playing the game.

I was told that this would make the department heads feel de-valued.

For my trouble, and for embarrasing my line manager, I was told to do even more clerical work.

How utterly typical of the public sector and probably some of the larger private sector monoliths as well….

When I worked in the I.T. Dept of our Local Authority, we had a rolling program to replace PC’s every 3 years. Now, this is fair enough for some users and departments, who may have to keep up with software updates etc but we were also rolling out the same high spec machines to departments which had users who only used them for emails etc.

When I pointed out that we could save thousands by refurbishing the used PC’s for such users, I was told that this would make the department heads feel de-valued.

On another tack, I also pointed out that, being paid as computer professionals, it made no sense to have us spending time on basic clerical work when we could employ someone to do it at half our hourly rate. This was especially galling as we had to bring in contractors at £800 per week because we couldn’t keep up with our substantive work.

For my trouble, and for embarrasing my line manager, I was told to do even more clerical work.

I’m happy to say I no longer work there