Michael S. Clark

My dad got a call a couple of weeks back from the chairman of the Oyster Trust in Arbroath. He’s a old work colleague from Halliburton so he and my dad got on.

The Oyster Trust run Oyster Craft and the Oyster Bar, or OB’s; a sort of alcohol-free pub where “the kidz” can go and “chill” after school and at weekends etc. They have a three PC’s with internet access, as well as three D-Link security cameras and a network printer.

Anyway they’d been having connectivity issues, they didn’t really know how to use the security cameras, and the printer would work “sometimes”. We were also astonished to hear how many companies, including the original installer, had been, tried to get the whole thing working consistently, failing, and leaving, charging upwards of £200 in the process.

Now at this point, I could name names, including some well known small IT business in and around Angus and Dundee, but I don’t have all the facts including who charged the most, but needless to say, none of them seemed to have a clue about SME network installation.

I think the problem stemmed from the original guys who deemed that wireless was the answer to everything, so there were no hard connections anywhere. Fine you may say, but,

• one of the PC’s and one of the IP cameras where in Oyster Crafts which, although next door to OB’s, was still through a double bricked and insulated wall;
• the wireless router was placed behind an LCD television, and only two or three feet from both of the other PC’s and still no cabling was used;
• the IP cameras are constantly transmitting information, flooding the network with traffic;
• the main administration PC was down in the basement/staff room. Now this had been cabled for about 20 feet up the stair, and, wait for it, into the back of a wireless ethernet bridge, so it was wireless too!
• everything was using the single wireless channel;
• The internet connection was ADSL, but the public payphone was connected without a micro filter;
• Instead of a combined wireless ADSL modem router, they had installed a wired ADSL modem router and connected a wireless router to it. Not a wireless access point, another router;
• everything had a static IP address;

They were complaining about connectivity issues.

I bet they were.

The first thing we did was rip everything out. We installed a new ADSL modem router in the basement of OB’s and cabled the administration PC to it. We ran a cable into the roof space and down to an ethernet switch near where the old routers used to be and ran cables to the two internet PC’s, the two cameras and the network printer. We then ran another cable through the wall to a second switch next door to Oyster Crafts and connected the other camera and PC to it. We also added a wireless access point to the main switch.

I get so pissed off when I see people like this getting ripped off over and over again by so-called professionals who take people’s money and have no clue about what they’re doing.

If you can’t do it properly, don’t do it.

if you’re getting someone in, make sure they explain what they’re doing in a way you can understand and preferably have someone there who knows what they are talking about.