On Tue, 08 Aug 2006 15:25:07 GMT John Navas wrote: | On 8 Aug 2006 14:25:17 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@ipal.net wrote in | : | |>On Mon, 07 Aug 2006 18:54:04 GMT John Navas wrote: |>
|>|>How much money do you think a small business should budget for the |>|>router that their internet access connection goes through? |>| |>| $300; e.g., SonicWALL TZ-150 Wireless |>| $150 (less-capable) bargain: ZyXEL G-2000 Plus |>
|>So what do I get for 2-5 times the price? A non-Indian tech support accent? | | Did you actually check it out but missed the obvious differences? Or | are you just being argumentative? ;) Whatever -- I'll play along one | more time -- what you get for the higher price is: Solid design. | Robust business-oriented feature set (e.g., enforced VPN, intrusion | detection and prevention, security zones, guest feature, content | filtering). Polished interface. Management and reporting. Stability. | Actually works as claimed. High reliability. Certification. Hardware | AES. Very good support. There's really no comparison.
"Solid design" --> subjective ... what? a metal case? "Robust business-oriented feature set" --> sounds like sales talk ( enforced VPN intrusion detection and prevention security zones guest feature content filtering ) --> good, if actually needed Polished interface. --> subjective Management and reporting. --> ?? Stability. --> subjective or sales talk Actually works as claimed. --> maybe you can put up a list of false claims for other products on the wiki. For now, I know that Netgear failed to identify the WGT624 as access points. High reliability. --> in what aspects? Certification. --> with few exceptions, generally worthless Hardware AES. --> if the CPU is too slow, useful Very good support. --> no foreign accents? There's really no comparison. --> subjective
How about
| |>|>Because of the poor design? Because the products will fail in time? |>|>Because the products lack features? |>| |>| Yes. Also buggy and poorly support. A couple of hours of my time |>| wasted and they've spent more money than they would have by getting a |>| business grade product in the first place. |>
|>Sometimes. Businesses typically go short on dozens of things they buy, |>and end up having to pay extra because of 1 or 2 of those and still end |>up ahead with the whole approach taken into consideration. It is risk. |>But lots of small businesses are taking survival risks every day. Most |>don't have the financial luxury to play it safe everywhere all the time. | | Even a very small business with (say) five computers and associated | peripherals has on the order of $10,000 invested and an ongoing | operating cost on the order of $3,500 per year. In that context, even | ignoring the value of business risk, the additional $250 expense of a | proper wireless network product is noise.
You have not yet justified why _routers_ should enjoy the extra $250 expenditure, and NOT do similar for the dozens of other things that make up the $10,000 investment.
If a business could buy the best of everything and spend $50,000 doing so, but has only $10,000, in general, _everything_ gets downgraded to an expenditure level of perhaps $8,00, leaving $2,000 for dealing with some of the issues that pop up. Maybe what will fail is a router and that would be replaced. But from a business perspective, everything is on an equal footing unless there is some valid evidence that raises one area well above the others. I'm sure the copier salesman would find a nice list of reasons for buying the "professional" $1500 model in lieu of the cheap $250 home model.
|>| Just because they do it doesn't mean it's a good idea -- lots of |>| businesses make poor IT choices. |>
|>Lots of businesses make choices that, when looked at in isolation |>really are poor choices. When looked at in total balance, not only |>from all aspects of each choice, but also considering the sum of |>choices together as a group, the practice actually makes sense. | | I respectfully disagree -- poor choices are poor choices. That small | businesses have such a high rate of failure is proof of that.
One very poor choice a business simply cannot make is to upgrade everything to the 5x cost "professional version", if the business only has the money for the low end versions. Banks don't like cashing checks on accounts with a negative balance.
So far all you are justifying is the _general_ principle of buy the best of everything. What you say so far has NOT raised the importance of a router for all businesses in general that have to follows the methods because of cash flow issues. There might be a few where they clearly and obviously need something more than average (an ISP for example). Justify why the router ... AND NOTHING ELSE ... warrants the extra expenditure.
|>|>There are things like budgets. Paying N times as much to accomplish the |>|>same thing doesn't let the budget have certain other things at all. |>| |>| There are always tradeoffs, but going for cheap is often more expensive |>| in the long run. What businesses often fail to properly consider on the |>| front end is the total cost of ownership, including business losses, |>| downtime, technical help, etc. |>
|>What's really dangerous for a business to do is a choice for which |>there is no recovery available. There is a recovery available from |>going short on basic business needs. Was the choice of router a bad |>one? If so, take your lumps and buy a better one. | | Unfortunately, it's all too often not that cheap or easy when it comes | to security, which can have devastating business consequences when a | breach occurs.
OTOH, it's just as stupid to buy a "security solution" and then depend on it covering your arse for all the other stupid things to do. The sales people pushing security routers too often give people the impression that it is a solve-all tool. It never is. NEVER. And depending on what the business is doing, and how it is doing it, lots of this endless morass of new security features are not even needed. It's better to fit the security to the actual business situation. If the situation needs a broad suite of things, that's what they should get.
|>If a router was |>the _only_ thing they were buying, I'd agree with you (and my techie |>orientation would be satisfied as well). In reality, it's one of |>dozens or hundreds of choices they make with the expectation that some |>of them indeed will end up being bad choices. Then they move on, still |>being ahead of the game because 97% of the choices worked out. | | As I wrote, wrongheaded false economy. But it keeps me working, so | I shouldn't complain too much.
As a techie I'm always inclined to encourage business to get the very best of everything. But I've been involved with businesses enough at a level where I know this is simply not a reality. I've had to do budgets before. And that was a job I absolutely hated because it meant NOT getting so many really cool things that would have made the business operate much smoother.
Yeah, this practice will keep money flowing to you. It will also keep it flowing to others in other cases because it will be other things that fail where a business needs a consultant, technician, or replacement. I can give you a lot of horror stories I've seen where things go wrong because business decisions force them to go short on everything. One thing a CFO would love to have is a crystal ball so they could see what _will_ file in the future and improve on that from the start. Reality _is_ that unless specifics are know ahead of time (sometimes this is possible) you go short on everything, and make up for what needs it.
So how would you connect a doctor's office to the internet to be in full compliance with HIPAA? I'll tell you how I have advised two cases I had. Don't connect the LAN at all. Connect one computer in the conference room to the net by itself, with a printer. As a big Linux advocate, I'd rather have seen them use Linux everything. But that's not in the cards because they need to run specific applications that aren't available for Linux. But even with Linux, I would have said don't connect the internet to the LAN.
If you are ever in a CFO hot seat, then you'll come to know the real issues that are involved. It was bad enough when I was in the CIO hot seat. Not as hot, but hot enough. But it was a real learning experience.