[57north-discuss] Space Network

[Alfie Pates]

Aye, I'm familiar with a lot of these problems - I work for your upstream's upstream!

I'm just a *little* concerned that this is sounds like a large number of moving parts for what is effectively a SMB network with a little site-to-site connectivity tacked on the side.

I'm not suggesting that people will be tinkering 24/7 - an unspoken rule of most spaces I've spent time is "don't hack the caffeine, don't hack the wifi" because once these two things are missing people get grumpy :P - but I am suggesting that if something breaks or a change (for which there is consensus) needs to be made, jumping through 75 different badly documented hoops is going to lead to somebody making a mistake and breaking something, somewhere. I've been there - it's not fun. 

If you can build something reliable, widely-understood and maintainable, I am super in favour of that. More so if it's built around open-source components and is redistributable - I'd be happy to contribute to that, actually. 

If this is another magical black box that only one or two people really understand... well, you're putting yourself at risk of 3AM phonecalls when the network breaks :D

The TP-link switches are very shallow - my rack at home is 300mm deep (versus the normal 600mm carrier suite rack) and the TP-links fit easily. I'll see if I have a spare one going.

~a