yesterday was a landmark day for me. Why? Because I finally was able to get a border router installed on our network.
At first I wanted to include fancy diagrams and picture of our network, but I can't in good conscience publicly post the structure of our network. But I am taking a moment to reflect.
3 years ago when I arrived here, there was a single firewall, and several network switches. The firewall was also the default router for the entire network. It was almost an entirely flat network, and we served out business machines as well as internet connection at home.
That meant, 1 mail server, 1 web proxy, one, one, one. It meant viruses spread faster, it meant a network problem affected EVERYONE.
After yesterday's installation of the first non-firewall router this place has seen, the network is MUCH more reliable, organized, secure, and stable.
We now have 4 separate major networks.
Business, Home, DMZ, and GUEST.
And the firewalls no longer handle all of the routing for the network, there are multiple firewalls and a router that handles internal traffic and a router that handles external traffic.
Also 3 years ago there was almost zero documentation on our network and nearly ZERO monitoring of our network.
If people couldn't connect they'd call, we'd run down and fix it.
NOW, after 3 years. We have TOTAL visibility on the network. We show up and repair network problems before people know they happened. I have implemented several pieces of software for monitoring and have built a Network Operations Center.
Also the network is documented VERY thoroughly using a combination of Visio documents and a Confluence wiki that we document things in.
What we have seen in 3 years, and I do not say this to either discredit my predecessors or to toot my own horn... but to let you, our partners know what your contribution has done...
We have seen in 3 years is a migration from a network that was pieced together and loosely understood and documented ... to...
a stronger, separated, secure, documented, observed, professionally designed and well maintained network.
ALL of that with minimal investment a I (and some others) were able to get equipment and software donated.
As we prepare for furlough, I look back on the past 3+ years and my baby.... (the network) and breath a huge breath of satisfaction knowing.... that there is something that will support the work here for quite a long time now. Something that other people can come in and look at, and read on and understand.
Praise be to God who took a guy like me, who didn't know anything about networking 6 years ago... taught him networking... then coupled him with people who sent him to a third world country to help them..... and then accomplished that work!
Thanks God, and thanks partners!
I'm really excited because I didn't think I could get this done before furlough.
I have some definite plans and ideas for when I return, regarding what I'd like to see.
I've gotten several comments, maybe I'll share them here.
