Spanning tree melt down ?

Thu Nov 28 01:23:44 UTC 2002

Just a data point here, most hospital networks and it departments are headed
by Doctor's.  They have to sign off on everything from equipment selection,
platform changes everything.  Some have a clew but admittedly its no more
than a self taught clew of the very basics from having 3 servers at home
that their kids use to game.  Others have even less.  I've personally had to
explain to heads of medical networks that their servic plan is invalid if
they continue to install quake servers on the image archive system.  <Hey it
was one of the few oc12 connected servers makes sense right?>

Hospital networks are really frightening and there is no best practices in
place for the most part.  There are a few exceptions but in general its
unbelievable.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bohdan Tashchuk" <tashchuk at easystreet.com>
To: <nanog at merit.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, November 27, 2002 4:39 PM
Subject: Re: Spanning tree melt down ?

>
> > Minimal social engineering plus a weak network security infrastructure
> > is a disaster waiting to happen for any major medical facility.
>
> You forgot to mention probable political infighting. And maybe
> inexperienced leadership. My favorite snippet from the article is:
>
> Dr. John Halamka, the former emergency-room physician
> who runs Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center's gigantic
> computer network.
>
> Is a physician, after years of medical school, internship, residency,
> etc. the right person to be in charge of a "gigantic" computer network?
> Are arteries and veins the equivalent of fiber and CAT-5?
>
> I'd love to be the Cisco rep selling $3 million of new network equipment
> to this guy. What is the probability that he as ANY idea what "spanning
> tree protocol" means?
>