Hello,

I currently work for a company as a summer intern and it is my second to last day before I go to school. My boss has decide that for my final day he wants we to write an essay about our current network situation and its problems, the ideal solution, the proposed solution, and how it will save us money.

Our current situation is that we have a few hundred computers running on hubs mainly. All the hubs uplinks are connected to one switch and all the servers a connected to that switches as well. The T1 is also connected to this switch. The problem is that when a user connected to a hub in the back opens a big files, it slows down or bumps off everyone on the network.

The ideal solution is to buy all brand new switches.

The proposed solution is to at first only buy a few switches and put them in the most traffic intense areas.

How this will save the company money is beyond me.

Does anyone have any ideas? I am not a great writer, but I need to make this a good paper, as I will be working for this company next summer as well if I do well on this paper. Is anyone a good writer here and could elaborate and help me think of ideas? Has anyone already typed this kind of paper so I can read a few examples (not just about switches, but any essay that you have had to write in the format {current situation, ideal situation, proposed situation, and benefits}? Thanks, Kyle

Kyle, this is a complex paper. Your boss, being a boss, has made a very bad decision of giving you such an assignment 1 day before your leave. Its just unfair from my point of view. Especially if he hasn't loaded you with so much work during the whole Internship period, then its just unwise of him.

I think you should tell him that a GOOD VALUABLE plan/paper that could carry any analysing value and proposed solutions is at least 4-5 days work with a team of people, not sole paper. This kind of decision should be analysed with a team of experts from several company's departnments and not be given out to one intern.

I think it would be right for you to remind him of your leave tomorrow or in 1 day and tell him that you'd be willing to work on it outside your intership and send him a report in 1 week from home or whatever. He should understand. If he doesn't, that would mean he is an ******* and its not the kind of company I would want to work for.

I've wrote this kind of papers, but for competitive business classes in my university.

Lastly, please don't consider it rude or anything, but life is tough. If the boss gave you an assignment, why do you think anyone would do it for you?

I wish you good luck, Kyle.

I'm not a network tech so wouldn't know the best answer but in general, the best/most ideal solution to a problem does not always involve saving money (in the short term at least). It's usually a case of weighing up the pro's and con's and deciding the balance between the two.

Maybe you could focus on savings in the area of man hours, efficiency, etc with the new faster setup which will pay for itself in X months after the initial outlay for new hardware?

Just make something up involving satellite uplinks, microwave transmitters, plasma inverse transducers etc. etc.

Your boss won't notice ;)

Originally posted by ubergeek22
Your boss won't notice ;)

:emlaugh:

Originally posted by ubergeek22
Just make something up involving satellite uplinks, microwave transmitters, plasma inverse transducers etc. etc.

Your boss won't notice ;)

Throw in the warp coils and the deflector dish if you get time too. Everyone loves the deflector dish ;)

he wants we to write an essay about our current network situation and its problems, the ideal solution, the proposed solution, and how it will save us money.

Ah yes, the time honoured trick of getting free/cheap consultancy work out of students ;)

Tell them they need to invest in some serious Cisco switching equipment. Throw in terms like OC-192 and hot swap fans. Oh, and don't forget to mention the lots of flashing LEDs :P

Originally posted by robinbalen
terms like OC-192...hot swap fans...flashing LEDs :P

Now you're just being ridiculous! :D ;)

Hmm... what I would suggest would be to break up the t1, sending a set amount of banwidth to each subnetwork. Do the users need to xfer files from local comp to local comp?

Just tell him you quit!

Originally posted by KyleLC23

The ideal solution is to buy all brand new switches.

The proposed solution is to at first only buy a few switches and put them in the most traffic intense areas.

How this will save the company money is beyond me.


You are thinking like a techie, you need to think like a business person. A good business person is going to work with the available tools, and come up with the best workable solution, given the business constraints.

In your case, you don't necessarily want to use the switches in the areas with the most traffic, because those areas are probably already switched (your servers). Instead, you want to use the switches to segment your traffic as much as possible.

What I would do is give each department a switch, you didn't mention how many switches you would be getting, but I assume not enough so each user has a port. Lets say you get 5 24 port switches. That is enough to cover more than half of your users. So, plug as many people as possible in each department into the switch and the rest can stay hubbed.

The switches, would obviously plug into the core switch, as would the servers. You could possibly even restrict traffic more by creating departmental VLANS and really isolating the traffic.

As far as cost savings, the biggest area of gain is in employee productivity. Lets say you spend $7000 on 5 new switches. You have to show how you will recover the cost. In this case, lets say that the average employee loses an hour of productivity a month of because of network slowness due to the hubbed network. If the average person in the firm makes $15 an hour, then that's $3000 in productivity gains every month. Just on these numbers alone, the company would have made back the $7000 in less than 3 months.

However, there are other benefits. A switched network improves security -- disgruntled employees are not able to poke around on other computers and possibly gain access to confidential documents.

Improved network speed also means fewer calls to the helpdesk, so helpdesk emlpoyees can focus on other tasks (or, if you outsource your helpdesk, it means lowering the monthly helpdesk expense).

Finally, a switched network offers better network management and monitoring opportunities. If employees are using their work computers for filesharing and things like that, even a basic switched network will provide some insight into that through tools like MRTG.