Network Infrastructure

At Silvercrest Children’s Development Center, the network topography is Cat5 100/10 MB Ethernet, with two servers and fifty systems tied in. The network administrator has inherited a third generation administration site, and wiring is a bit of a nightmare, undocumented with a few color tapes on different colored wires.

There is even an old unused coaxial cable that no one’s ever bothered to work with or had time to rip out, because the structure of the building consists of 2’ thick concrete walls and red tile. Silvercrest was built in 1940 as a TB hospital. (Warning: many bacteria go into stasis, not death, and the poor network administrator enters areas where angels fear to tread.)

The NOS is Novell 4.10 and has enough patches to make a few quilts. It runs well and hasn’t crashed in the two years the NA has been on site, except when a generator test went bad and power was lost for an entire day.  Servers are locked up in two separate and secure rooms. If an experienced administrator can physically touch a server, he can break into it.

If a user wants to know if the network is truly down, they’ll simply never see a login prompt. This was a problem when a hub died in early January. The business office has the network administrator's home and pager numbers for such emergencies.