Pausing to reconsider

Several days ago, I posted that I was looking to displace my linux based router firewalls with 'enterprise' appliance like solutions. Let me start again. A lot of this discontent was fostered by an unstable box in a very critical position, that had a habit of going down when I needed it to stay up. Since I spend most of my days these days 132 miles away from that box, I was somewhat forced to stick to the plan of rebooting it (remotely) when trouble cropped up. This experience made me very bitter, because every time this machine went down I lost the confidence of those who were relying on services that were dependent on it. Eventually, I began to wonder if I was doing right by my customers by using a more versatile and less expensive solution that seemed to be less reliable.

I have come to my senses. Business owners often need to come to the realization at some point that spending money does not increase customer satisfaction. Just because there is a more expensive option that is better marketed, does not mean that you should question the validity of your original strategy. I have to remind myself of this sometimes as well, as I had to in this case. A linux machine with a custom 2.6 kernel, coupled with systems like dhcp3-server, bind, openvpn, ntp (server), of course iptables, built in VLAN support, and any expansion card that can fit in a standard expansion slot, blows almost anything else out of the water in terms of features, and certainly in terms of price. Many of these features are essential to providing a high quality and reliable service. The hardware is really no different than that which runs in any of the leading 'appliance' solutions either. It's all about the software, and with Linux most of the time, that comes down to your ability to intelligently configure it.

It somehow seems appropriate that the pizazz of good marketing is very compelling until you try to justify your persuasion with numbers and common sense.

-AJB.

P.S. Pictures make stories better
While I am often reminded that slides for talks are best without any text on them (a theory that I debate to this day) I do recognize that Blogs are better with images. I think part of it comes from my own desire to look at random images of cool high-tech equipment (try google image searching for things like 'core switch' or 'fiber' one of these afternoons) and share my own pictures with others. Part of it also comes, I think, from a desire to share which somehow always seems more genuine when it involves images.

Pictured at the top to the left is the front of a Cisco PIX-501. It has been sitting in a box for the better part of two years, and I only recently broke it out when I was considering replacing one of our linux routers. I had to go through the process of flashing it to wipe out the enable password (which I could not remember for the life of me) but from there on out it was smooth sailing. I even drew out a nice diagram of how it would work in my revised network layout at that site. I have some other neat stuff coming in which I will photograph at my earliest convenience, as well as a few other images yet to post 'when time permits.'