And horseless carriages used to be less reliable than horses. The problem is the longstanding nature of the policy. They were paying a team of 6+ techs, surely

And horseless carriages used to be less reliable than horses. The problem is the longstanding nature of the policy. They were paying a team of 6+ techs, surely they could afford a process-review/technical updating meeting once a year? And surely there's a better way, such as standardizing on a brand of NICs and of switches, and being done with it. If you can't push an update to the machines to prevent this anyways. Besides, it shouldn't cause cascading failure so the worst case scenario is a tech call, the same as for an unplugged cable.