RE: Network Design - What Priscilla did NOT cover [7:64959]
I have as yet not read this book due to finishing other studies, but will definitely do so soon - for my CCIE (refresher in case I have become stale) to come one day when I get the office hours workload down and time off in the evenings to focus on something other than work. Problem is now that my CCNP expires next year. What was I thinking when I started in this industry - no after hours work !:) Andrew -Original Message- From: John Brandis [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 11 March 2003 05:00 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Network Design - What Priscilla did NOT cover [7:64959] I love the book, which is why I photo-copied it twice... Just joking. Good book, but it still costs to much. I wonder if the author would just send me a copy out of the goodness of her heart. I also wonder what Santa Clause did with my sports car that I requested last year... -Original Message- From: Priscilla Oppenheimer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, 11 March 2003 10:17 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Network Design - What Priscilla did NOT cover [7:64959] OK, I've seen enough of this inaccurate title for a thread. Of course Top-Down Network Design covers Layer 8 and above issues. It's a main focus of the first chapter and one of the reasons the book has done so well. One of my goals was to help newbies, especially, and also the guys (and yes, it's mostly guys who think this way! ;-) who assume network design is a matter of selecting speeds and feeds and cool devices. Chuck confirms that the hardest challenges are dealing with difficult design customers who won't tell you the entire story either because of politics or because they don't the entire story and don't want to look stupd, have ridciulous budgets but won't make any trade-offs, have biases for certain technologies for no technical reason, etc. Those are all discussed in Top-Down Network Design. Of course, reading about it in a book and encountering it for real are two different things. Maybe that's why Chuck forgot that it's in the book. Well, I know he was also just trying to be funny, but the inaccuracy of the thread title bugs me. @:-) Of course, Oscar Wilde did say, There's no such thing as bad press. Priscilla John Neiberger wrote: Chuck, Your story illustrates why I wouldn't make a good consultant. In reading your story I found several points where I would have walked out, but only after shoving Tab A (the scope of work) up that guys Slot A. :-) Figuratively speaking, of course. John Scott Roberts 3/10/03 2:52:54 PM wow, I've never worked on such a large order, but the RFPs I've designed out have never been this much of a joke. it seems that the IT staff of this company had no clue what they wanted or needed and decided to get some free advice! the only similair scenario I can mention is when a small private school was looking to upgrade their network to gigabit (yet never fully utilized the old FE) and were shocked at the cost of the equipment. they dropped the whole upgrade totally at that point. I'm interested in hearing if any others have seen such a poor of a 'scope of work' put out before? scott Symon Thurlow wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Yikes! You must have big plums to persist with a customer like that. It sounds like a disaster waiting to happen! Symon -Original Message- From: The Long and Winding Road [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 08 March 2003 19:44 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Network Design - What Priscilla did NOT cover in her book: WAS [7:64842] Symon Thurlow wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Hey Chuck, How did that big design go, the one you mentioned on the list a few months ago? Symon You mean the Never Ending Design? The Nightmare before the CCIE Lab? Here is a brief rundown. I will say in advance that as all of you who work in the real world with real world management, real world customers, and real world situations already know, the real work is at layers 8,9, and 10. Project Summary: large organization, 2000+ employees, 10,000 data ports, 3 dozen locations, with each location being a campus of several buildings or several floors within buildings. The project RFP called for a complete forklift of the existing infrastructure - routers, switches, PBX. It also called for wireless for voice and data. The project goal was to create a network fully capable of providing seamless integrated services for data, voice, and video. Oh yes, there was a three week turnaround deadline for the response, and there was no flexibility in this. Meet the customer date or lose the opportunity. On top of that, as is typical with most RFP's, all questions are to be submitted in writing, and all responses go to all bidders. Clues that something is strange: 1) for any wireless response this complex, detailed site
Re: Network Design - What Priscilla did NOT cover [7:64959]
OK, I've seen enough of this inaccurate title for a thread. Of course Top-Down Network Design covers Layer 8 and above issues. It's a main focus of the first chapter and one of the reasons the book has done so well. One of my goals was to help newbies, especially, and also the guys (and yes, it's mostly guys who think this way! ;-) who assume network design is a matter of selecting speeds and feeds and cool devices. Chuck confirms that the hardest challenges are dealing with difficult design customers who won't tell you the entire story either because of politics or because they don't the entire story and don't want to look stupd, have ridciulous budgets but won't make any trade-offs, have biases for certain technologies for no technical reason, etc. Those are all discussed in Top-Down Network Design. Of course, reading about it in a book and encountering it for real are two different things. Maybe that's why Chuck forgot that it's in the book. Well, I know he was also just trying to be funny, but the inaccuracy of the thread title bugs me. @:-) Of course, Oscar Wilde did say, There's no such thing as bad press. Priscilla John Neiberger wrote: Chuck, Your story illustrates why I wouldn't make a good consultant. In reading your story I found several points where I would have walked out, but only after shoving Tab A (the scope of work) up that guys Slot A. :-) Figuratively speaking, of course. John Scott Roberts 3/10/03 2:52:54 PM wow, I've never worked on such a large order, but the RFPs I've designed out have never been this much of a joke. it seems that the IT staff of this company had no clue what they wanted or needed and decided to get some free advice! the only similair scenario I can mention is when a small private school was looking to upgrade their network to gigabit (yet never fully utilized the old FE) and were shocked at the cost of the equipment. they dropped the whole upgrade totally at that point. I'm interested in hearing if any others have seen such a poor of a 'scope of work' put out before? scott Symon Thurlow wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Yikes! You must have big plums to persist with a customer like that. It sounds like a disaster waiting to happen! Symon -Original Message- From: The Long and Winding Road [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 08 March 2003 19:44 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Network Design - What Priscilla did NOT cover in her book: WAS [7:64842] Symon Thurlow wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Hey Chuck, How did that big design go, the one you mentioned on the list a few months ago? Symon You mean the Never Ending Design? The Nightmare before the CCIE Lab? Here is a brief rundown. I will say in advance that as all of you who work in the real world with real world management, real world customers, and real world situations already know, the real work is at layers 8,9, and 10. Project Summary: large organization, 2000+ employees, 10,000 data ports, 3 dozen locations, with each location being a campus of several buildings or several floors within buildings. The project RFP called for a complete forklift of the existing infrastructure - routers, switches, PBX. It also called for wireless for voice and data. The project goal was to create a network fully capable of providing seamless integrated services for data, voice, and video. Oh yes, there was a three week turnaround deadline for the response, and there was no flexibility in this. Meet the customer date or lose the opportunity. On top of that, as is typical with most RFP's, all questions are to be submitted in writing, and all responses go to all bidders. Clues that something is strange: 1) for any wireless response this complex, detailed site surveys are required. there is not time to do this. answer: well then just do a site survey. besides, we have aerial photographs of all of our locations posted on our web site. you can use those to determine what you need. 2) you're RFP provides numbers of IDF's in each location and total number of ports required. e.g. site X has 7 IDF's and 257 data ports. do you have detail as to how many data ports are in each specific closet? answer: use an average, or come out here and do a site survey and figure it out for yourself. 3) you're RFP calls for L3 switching in each and every closet. Is this necessary, given that there is only a single ingress/egress, and that all sites are hub and spoke? plus L3 is more expensive, and I'm not sure there is anything to gain. answer: we want L3 everywhere. are you saying your ( Cisco ) equipment does not do L3? Customer: oh by the way, we will be opening a new location sometime in the next 18 months. I want you to include that location in this response. 4) how many closets? how many phones?
RE: Network Design - What Priscilla did NOT cover [7:64959]
I love the book, which is why I photo-copied it twice... Just joking. Good book, but it still costs to much. I wonder if the author would just send me a copy out of the goodness of her heart. I also wonder what Santa Clause did with my sports car that I requested last year... -Original Message- From: Priscilla Oppenheimer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, 11 March 2003 10:17 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Network Design - What Priscilla did NOT cover [7:64959] OK, I've seen enough of this inaccurate title for a thread. Of course Top-Down Network Design covers Layer 8 and above issues. It's a main focus of the first chapter and one of the reasons the book has done so well. One of my goals was to help newbies, especially, and also the guys (and yes, it's mostly guys who think this way! ;-) who assume network design is a matter of selecting speeds and feeds and cool devices. Chuck confirms that the hardest challenges are dealing with difficult design customers who won't tell you the entire story either because of politics or because they don't the entire story and don't want to look stupd, have ridciulous budgets but won't make any trade-offs, have biases for certain technologies for no technical reason, etc. Those are all discussed in Top-Down Network Design. Of course, reading about it in a book and encountering it for real are two different things. Maybe that's why Chuck forgot that it's in the book. Well, I know he was also just trying to be funny, but the inaccuracy of the thread title bugs me. @:-) Of course, Oscar Wilde did say, There's no such thing as bad press. Priscilla John Neiberger wrote: Chuck, Your story illustrates why I wouldn't make a good consultant. In reading your story I found several points where I would have walked out, but only after shoving Tab A (the scope of work) up that guys Slot A. :-) Figuratively speaking, of course. John Scott Roberts 3/10/03 2:52:54 PM wow, I've never worked on such a large order, but the RFPs I've designed out have never been this much of a joke. it seems that the IT staff of this company had no clue what they wanted or needed and decided to get some free advice! the only similair scenario I can mention is when a small private school was looking to upgrade their network to gigabit (yet never fully utilized the old FE) and were shocked at the cost of the equipment. they dropped the whole upgrade totally at that point. I'm interested in hearing if any others have seen such a poor of a 'scope of work' put out before? scott Symon Thurlow wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Yikes! You must have big plums to persist with a customer like that. It sounds like a disaster waiting to happen! Symon -Original Message- From: The Long and Winding Road [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 08 March 2003 19:44 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Network Design - What Priscilla did NOT cover in her book: WAS [7:64842] Symon Thurlow wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Hey Chuck, How did that big design go, the one you mentioned on the list a few months ago? Symon You mean the Never Ending Design? The Nightmare before the CCIE Lab? Here is a brief rundown. I will say in advance that as all of you who work in the real world with real world management, real world customers, and real world situations already know, the real work is at layers 8,9, and 10. Project Summary: large organization, 2000+ employees, 10,000 data ports, 3 dozen locations, with each location being a campus of several buildings or several floors within buildings. The project RFP called for a complete forklift of the existing infrastructure - routers, switches, PBX. It also called for wireless for voice and data. The project goal was to create a network fully capable of providing seamless integrated services for data, voice, and video. Oh yes, there was a three week turnaround deadline for the response, and there was no flexibility in this. Meet the customer date or lose the opportunity. On top of that, as is typical with most RFP's, all questions are to be submitted in writing, and all responses go to all bidders. Clues that something is strange: 1) for any wireless response this complex, detailed site surveys are required. there is not time to do this. answer: well then just do a site survey. besides, we have aerial photographs of all of our locations posted on our web site. you can use those to determine what you need. 2) you're RFP provides numbers of IDF's in each location and total number of ports required. e.g. site X has 7 IDF's and 257 data ports. do you have detail as to how many data ports are in each specific closet? answer: use an average, or come out here and do a site survey and figure it out for yourself. 3) you're RFP calls for L3 switching in each
