What would you say is harder, I would say running lol cause then you have to be support for everyone on it and that sucks. I hate that crap.

Don't know.  Never kepp a network before.  [banana]

I'd say the most challenging thing would be to build AND THEN support it.

You'll know pretty quickly whether you've built it correctly or not.

If you didn't do it right, at least you will learn quite a bit.

I would say the hardest part about networking is designing one that meets all customer expectations, exceeds present requirements, allows growth (incl personnel and applications) and can be aquired for the modest sum they want to pay for it.

If it is built properly (I have more broken ones than good ones) and the proper change control policies are in place, managing one is a piece of cake.

ken_mays;  I will disagree with you.  There are things that can go wrong on a network and it can take some time before problems become evident.  However, you will learn quite a bit in the process of fixing what was broke while trying to not break anything else.

A network properly built can run, without changes being made, for a year or more. Growth, provider and other changes cause problems, esp if they were not planned for. Equipment failure is the other major source of problems.

On the other hand, it can be quite a handful to walk into a job cold, and learn the network from the ground up with nobody to help you out.  Especially if the network is constantly plagued with problems.

It's easy to build a network that will work.  Building a network that will keep working as it grows is the problem.  I've seen too many paper pushing consultants throw together a network with absolutely no regard for future growth.  From poor addressing to routing protocols to equipment choices, there are plenty of spots to f*ck up.  Few of them had much of an incentive to do it right because as soon as they got their money they were gone.

You are all wrong.
Building and maintaining networks is the single most difficult job in the IT profession.  At least that's how I justify my salary requirements.

Seriously though, if you have a network that is small enough to be supported by a core group that communicates well, it is a piece of cake.  Throw in management with unreasonable and unrealistic expectations and end nodes that can have anything plugged into them and it becomes an excercise in futility.  A well paying excercise.

If I had my druthers, all nodes would be hardwired.  It probably wouldn't even be more costly in the long run, if you value your up-time.

I hear that. Prevoius job, walked in on my first day at 8:00 AM, expecting to do the HR paperwork thing and meeting the other workers.

No, the HR Manager walks out as says "The server (running ERP) is crashed and nobody can work". "Here's the admin password, there's the server room, CYA"

Staring at a blue screen and absolutley no idea what is running on any of the servers is not a fun way to get started.



Yes, it was so bad that while everyone else took a four day weekend for Thanksgiving, I spent the time rebuilding the whole system from scratch.

Seems the previous guy had installed Nutscrape, Norton Utilities, AIM, Yahoo, PCA9 and a bunch of other crap on all the servers [>(] The only way to clean up his mess was a clean format.

Well, now its three years later and all of them are still running like a top. A reboot every six months is all that is needed.

Anyone who says that NT is an unreliable OS just doesn't know how to set it up properly.

I know that one.  I've got a server where I work that was run by someone who installed all sorts of crap on it.  Cleaned it up and it's fine now.  

Yes, NT/2K is a perfectly acceptable OS if you're aware of its limitations.

The biggest problem with Windows servers is that any idiot can set them up.  And that is usually exactly who ends up doing it.

Building and maintaining is tough, but what I really hate is starting a job only to find out that their network is a shambles and that the management team cuts the legs off anything they please, without asking for input.

The last place I worked for had hubs all over the place, you know the little 3com office connects.  They split the ethernet cable off, half of the wiring shouldn't have worked at all, but it did as long as no more than 50 people logged onto the network.

Later on the net admin drew up a wiring plan for a new office.  They decided, without telling us, to cut the number of network drops.  So we travel to a different state, get to the office and nothing is there.  We call around, get the servers to show up and start checking the wiring.  One drop per office.  All network printer drops were gone.  It was done to shave $1K off the price of the installation.  We worked around the clock and ran more wire and finished the server install in time.