A pattern we keep meeting — and what we’d do differently if we’d been the ones holding the cable.
The cabinet in the comms room had eleven switches in it. Three brands. Two of them daisy-chained off a fourth switch sitting on top of a filing cabinet outside the room, on a desk extension lead. The patching was tidy in the front. The back was a mess of grey leads that all looked the same, no labels, and a single VLAN (virtual LAN, the way you carve one physical network into separate logical ones) that everything sat on, including the guest WiFi and the till system.
The client had inherited it. The previous IT supplier had bolted on what the business asked for, one quarter at a time, for about seven years. Each bolt-on was reasonable in isolation. Stacked up, the network had become something nobody could safely touch.
We were called in to “fix the WiFi”. Eight weeks later we’d replaced sixty per cent of the cabling, retired four switches, reconfigured every access point (AP, the WiFi box on the wall or ceiling), and built a VLAN structure that separated guest from staff from till from CCTV. The WiFi was fine, and the WiFi had never really been the problem.
How networks get like this
Nobody designs a network like this; they evolve into one, and the pattern’s almost always the same.
Year one, a small business buys a router and a switch and a couple of APs. Somebody plugs it in. It works. Year two, they add a till system, and somebody runs a cable to it. Year three, the office grows by ten desks, and another switch goes in to handle them. Year four, somebody installs CCTV and the installer asks for a network drop, which gets dropped wherever there’s a free port. Year five, the WiFi gets flaky in the back office, so an extra AP gets fitted. By year seven, nobody alive in the building can draw the network.
Each step was sensible, each was the cheapest available option at the time, and none of them involved going back and rethinking the whole.
The cost shows up later. Throughput problems that nobody can diagnose because the network has no shape. Security exposure because the till system shares a broadcast domain (one flat segment where every device can talk to every other) with the guest WiFi. Renewals that get harder every year because the kit is from four eras and three vendors. A new tenant who can’t move into the upstairs floor because the cabling won’t reach.
Why we end up rebuilding rather than patching
When we get called in, the temptation is to do the small fix: replace the dodgy AP, run a new cable, get the WiFi stable. We’ve done it, and it works for about six months. Then the next thing breaks, and the next, and we end up doing the rebuild anyway, but in pieces, more expensively, with the client paying for the same site visits twice.
So we’ve changed how we respond. If the network is past a certain threshold of accumulated decisions, we’ll quote the small fix, but we’ll also tell the client what’s underneath. The cabinet photo helps. So does walking them through the VLAN structure, or the lack of one. Most of the time, once they’ve seen it, they’d rather do the rebuild than keep paying for sticking plasters.
Not always; sometimes the answer is “we’ll live with it for another two years, then refresh as a project”. That’s a fine answer if it’s made with eyes open. The wrong answer is “we’ll keep patching and hope nothing breaks”.
What we’d have done from the start
This is the part that’s harder to say without sounding clever in hindsight. But if we’d been the firm in year one, the network we’d have built doesn’t look like the one we end up rebuilding. The difference isn’t kit; it’s three small disciplines:
Patch panel, every drop labelled, both ends. Every cable goes to a panel, every panel port has a number, and the number gets written down. Takes an extra hour at install, saves a day every year afterwards.
VLANs from day one, even when you don’t need them. A till system on its own VLAN costs nothing to set up when the network is being built, but costs three days when you’re retrofitting. Same for CCTV, guest WiFi, and anything that talks to a payment system.
A diagram you can actually trust. Drawn once at install, kept on a single page, updated every time a switch or AP changes. It doesn’t need to be pretty, it needs to be true. A networks-of-Theseus problem is what happens when nobody owns the diagram.
These aren’t expensive; they’re discipline. And discipline is exactly what gets compressed out when each year’s network change is treated as a one-off, costed individually, and approved by somebody who’s not thinking about year seven.
Where this lands with us
This is the heart of our Managed Services work, being the firm in year one who’s also still there in year seven. We design as if we’ll be the ones picking the network up again later. Sometimes that means slightly more spend up front. It always means a smaller bill at the rebuild, because the rebuild is smaller, or doesn’t happen at all.
The hidden cost of buying network in pieces, from whoever’s cheapest each year, is that you eventually pay somebody to undo it. We’ve been on both sides of that bill. The undo is the more expensive half.
In summary
If you’ve got a comms cabinet you’re nervous about opening, that’s information. The network’s telling you something. The till that drops mid-transaction, the CCTV camera that goes dark on Mondays, the WiFi that needs a router reboot in the morning, those aren’t quirks but early signs of a network you’ve outgrown. Hear it now and you’ve got a planned project. Hear it at 2am on a Friday when the till stops talking and you’ve got a crisis, and the cost of crisis is never a quote you’d have accepted in cold daylight.
Wondering whether your network is overdue a proper look? Drop us a note at info@jmopartners.co.uk. One of us will read it.
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