On Sat, 12 Aug 2006 09:15:16 -0700 Jeff Liebermann wrote: | snipped-for-privacy@ipal.net hath wroth: | |>Good example. However, I don't see how this example says that every |>small business needs to consider routers to be worth the expense when |>it means everything else has to go a bit further down in financing. | | Oh, that's easy. Calculate the maintenance costs of buying bottom of | the line equipment versus the capital equipment expenditure required | to prevent such maintenance costs. Also, if you look at the pricing | on commercial wireless installations, the cost of the hardware is | fairly small compared to the cost of the labor involved. If an | increase in capital equipment expenses can offset a labor charge, then | it might be worth the effort.
You're assuming that the maintenance cost is inevitable.
| Anyway, you've apparently missed my point. This is not about initial | hardware expenses. It's about the overall cost of ownership, of which | the initial hardware costs are only a small part. If better hardware | causes fewer problems, then it's a good investment.
Do you figure in the percentage probability of an expense and prorate it across all expenditures to calculate an average cost of ownership? Or are you assuming the worst case where everything will fail and drive costs to a maximum?
| Incidentally, not all businesses run on the bitter edge of bankruptcy, | where nickels and dimes are counted. I don't see too many of these as | they cannot afford my exorbitant labor rates.
The ones I know of that run in the bitter edge of bankruptcy are the ones that overspent to begin with.
|>So, do you have a list of routers that will survive a firmware flash |>without power? Or did you just recommend buying a UPS? | | They have a UPS. The power glitch went right through it. Again, you | missed my point. This is not about hardware selection. It's about | the effects of wireless/internet downtime on a business, and how | wireless has gone from a frill to a necessity.
Sounds like someone bought a cheap UPS. I don't always put them in, depending on need, but where I do, I get the dual-conversion type that are always converting AC to DC, paralleling the battery, and converting DC back to AC, 100% of the time. I never see glitches with those.
|>A business actually providing internet access in relation to the business |>they are doing really does need to consider the business continuity impact |>of the decisions. But not all businesses are doing that. | | Gibberish. I think you're saying that only wireless ISP's need to | consider wireless reliability. Try again. I have a few corporate | customers who use wireless to offset the cost of wiring their | building. Wireless is most certainly "mission critical".
Wireless ISPs are only one example.
If there is mission critical work going on _inside+ a building, I most certainly _never_ recommend wireless be used. I recommend a wired LAN in all cases. Or fiber in certain cases.
But it depends on the nature of what the business is doing and how they use the internet. Most can survive a few hours to a couple days if the LAN goes down, or if just the internet access goes down. Some can't, and they would be advised for something better (with different choices given costs and other requirements).
|>| I think I have about 4 customers currently using Sonicwall TZ170w |>| wireless routers. These are not cheap, but very reliable and very |>| feature infested. See: |>
|>And how many of these customers operate a business in which network |>access is directly related to the operation of their business? | | Three of them. If the wireless goes down, the laptops with the days | mobile warehouse updates requires that the drivers remove the laptops | from the trucks and drag them inside. Something similar with the | other warehouse. The 3rd is a medical office where they could | probably live without wireless but it would be a noticeable | inconvenience. The 4th is a coffee shop, who wanted to isolate the | customer laptops from the internal network. Incidentally, the owner | is a former engineering manager who certainly knows his networking but | doesn't want to waste his time screwing with it.
All but the 3rd seem to be cases where wireless is essential. Of course I don't know the details of the medical office and how wireless would be used there. But it would tend to concern me if I was making use of their service and they were making use of wireless.
|>| Anyway, if you have problems evaluating equipment, try to estimate |>| what downtime or a failure will cost. Then compare this downtime cost |>| with the initial hardware costs. | |>I do that. | | I don't see any evidence of that. You don't appear to think like a | small business owner, where both the short and long term costs of | everything are considered in each decision. If businesses were | perpetually on the bitter edge of bankruptcy, and capital equipment | expenditures were such an agonizing experience, the SMB (small medium | business) sector would have collapsed long ago.
Just because I take a hard critical look at things and don't come to the same conclusion you do doesn't mean I don't consider such things. But I'm not running the client's businesses, either. I just know how such businesses often are run from past experience. The ones that are more successful tend to be the ones that avoid overspending on all the things that are not a direct function of what the business is. For example a delivery business can't afford to go cheap on their trucks, but that can afford to go cheap on copy machines if they are not limited to a single one. A TV station can't afford to go cheap on the transmitter or master control, and in most cases the studio equipment. But they can go cheap on many other things that would be just a short term inconvenience if they fail (a new operation can't do that with remote cameras).
| One of the questions I'm always asked is "How long with this thing | last before it's obsolete and needs to be replaced" (i.e. life cycle | costing). With SMB wireless and computing in general, that's a very | real problem, but one which you haven't bothered to even mention in | your wireless hardware decision making process.
Funny you bring that up. It is in fact a frequent reason to spend less on things. I generally do recommend going cheap on the computers based on giving them a certain number of years before they are obsolete. But in many cases there has been a workable "hand me down" scheme where people without the need for the latest computer power end up with the computer the manager once used. Computers can be stretched to usage over quite many years (which is going to kill a LOT of Vista sales for Microsoft ... you just watch).
| It's also not easy to estimate downtime costs. I worked for about 30 | hours trying to nail down a realistic estimate of what a large medical | office recovery will cost in downtime and recovery. I had to revise | the numbers about 5 times in as many years. It required that I | document various disaster recovery scenarios. One of these scenarios | actually happened, and I found myself having underestimated the MTTR | (mean time to recover) by an embarrassing margin. I've also done dry | run recoveries with the usual surprises. As I said, I don't think | you've ever estimated the cost of downtime or failure for a business.
Yes I have. But not in a medical setting.
Speaking of medical settings, it sounds like you are working pretty in depth in that field, not just the wireless/networking setting. If that does include their computers, I sure hope you are taking appropriate consideration for verifiably wiping out the contents of all computer storage devices leaving such offices because of replacements or being upgraded. If a hard drive is replaced because it's too small, do you wipe off its content and check that it is, or irreversibly destroy it?
|>But I also figure in how they utilize the network. Most of |>the small businesses won't see much of a short term (e.g. sufficient time |>to buy a replacement router or otherwise determine what happened) impact. | | Any small business that can afford my exorbitant service rates, can | certainly afford to spend the money on superior hardware to avoid my | presence. More simply, I don't see many businesses where wireless is | NOT an important part of the business. It's not unusual for me to | charge more than the cost of the hardware to fix a system. They pay | because they really need the system to work, but they also ask about | getting better hardware.
It sounds like their wireless/networking failures are on average exceeding the failures in other areas.
| It also applies to home users with wireless. Most can manage without | wireless for a while, but I usually get the call within hours of the | wireless failing because it's has usually become so much a part of the | daily home life, that the inconvenience of not having wireless | connectivity through the house is considered a serious problem. It's | not unusual for me to arrive and find a brand new wireless router | purchased in the hope that it would magically solve the problem. (Two | junk routers do not equal one good router). I know that if my | neighborhood wireless system goes down, I get phone calls within an | hour or two. There may be home users that can live with crappy | wireless range and performance, but I don't see those. | | A TZ170w is about $750. A cheapo wireless router is about $100. The | $650 difference is about 9 hours of my lab our. Ignoring interest | charges, if buying a better router can be balanced against my service | charges, downtime costs, recovery costs, and early replacement costs | over the life of the system, then it's a bargain.
If you are seeing 100% failure rates in the cheapo wireless gear, then I suppose the figures you give are right.
A business that is spending $10,000 on various things in a year, of which networking is just one part, has to consider the potential failure of all those things. Certainly if the cheapo wireless device has 100% failure rate, then going with something better is worth it. The thing is, the usual practice is statistical based. They do assume that some proportion of all that is spent will require more expenditure. Knowing a rough idea of the failure rates certainly helps. But I have a hard time believing that the failure rate of Netgear and Linksys stuff bought at an office supply store is anywhere close to 100%. Probably not above 15% within the first year. But I'm just beginning on wireless, so if you know the failure rate is higher, I guess I have to take your word for it.