You get what you pay for

That phrase is very true. Especially when it comes to anything technology related. I find it interesting, however, that the more expensive and "fancy" something is, the more trouble it is to maintain that thing. I just wouldn't think that to be the case, but sadly it usually is.

For example, One of my friends bought a Mercedes. Nice car. Well, nice "looking" car is probably more appropriate. I mean, I drove it once and it is zippy, but when he had a problem with it, the service was very costly and difficult. Also, surprisingly, the car is completely useless if there is even a micron of snow on the ground. I am sure that the snooty, monocle-clad elite would argue that the Mercedes is designed for specific driving conditions, and really should only ever be driven on windy mountain roads in Sweden, preferably only while being filmed from a helicopter for a commercial for cologne, or a spy movie. Well, Reginald, if a car can't handle the tiniest amount of snow, I would worry about even driving it at all. What if a surprise rain came a fallin'? All I am saying is, I know that cars can be very pretty, but most people don't have car museums, so let's just draw the line somewhere.

How did I get so derailed there? Sorry about that. What actually spawned this whole thought was that over the weekend I upgraded some of the hardware over at Fibernet. I put a brand-new firewall in place along with a new cisco switch to replace our consumer-grade switch that was there before. It all went well, except that anytime I replace a device that faces Fibernet's switch, I have to call them and ask them to clear the arp cache so that their switch will pick up and allow traffic from the new device. This really only happens if I change anything from the firewall level and up, so usually not a big deal. And I know that their switch uses arp caching to make things a lot faster and that it is a good thing, but it's just another case-in-point that fancy things require more babying. Stupid baby switches!!

I guess I would rather have a something that is solid and works than some consumer-grade device that just kinda works. So I will take the extra work that comes with it. I do think it is worth the extra trouble. After replacing our consumer-grade switch with the fancy new cisco switch, our ping times have stabilized which is a dramatic change. Our ping fluctuations and collisions have also cleared up completely, which makes it worth it right there.