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State paid $22K each for Internet routers

148 points by Lazare 15y ago

sakai 15y ago
Well... at least they got high-powered routers for $22K apiece. But, it's a shame there isn't a law on the books that selling the government something at 50X the market price / need is fraud.* * Yes, I realize this would bankrupt half the military contractors as well.
- clarky07 15y ago
  Can't blame them for selling them something they asked for. Who's to say they were even told what they were for. This is government waste and incompetence, nothing more. You are correct on the military contractors as well though. Lots of government waste and incompetence there as well.
conformal 15y ago
wow. somehow i doubt these sites have multiple uplinks, so they certainly don't need BGP routers. even if they're doing IPSec between some locations this can be handled by an old piece-of-junk $100 computer running BSD or nix, e.g. with isakmpd and pf. stuff like this is why america's infrastructure is crumbling: dodgy contractors looking for an excuse to upcharge municipalities for irrelevant gear and services.
- mahmud 15y ago
  Here in Australia, our local DMV (RTA) is all MacBook Pros, all running Windows XP in virtualization. Would love to meet the dipshit that authorized this travesty.
- dfc 15y ago
  You really want to advocate installing "old piece of junk" routers across the entire state? Have you ever managed a project this large? And if so did you use old piece of junk equipment?
  - sk5t 15y ago
    $500-1k appliances with Atom CPUs running pfSense, please, not $100 clunkers with spinning drives and dust-laden fans. Anything more than that for a moderately large library or most schools is an outlandish, shameful waste of money and equipment.
8ig8 15y ago
I describe this as 'funny money'. The government is spending other people's money. I imagine the government worker that signed off on this purchase worrying a lot more about a dollar increase in the local lunch special than millions spent on equipment.
- cma 15y ago
  It is also funny money because the marginal cost of producing one of these routers is more like $500, not $20k. It is just a transfer payment to the company, it isn't the same as if the government burned $20k worth of barrels of oil. Nothing near that amount in resources was actually wasted.
  - msellout 15y ago
    Not quite. Cisco will probably take this purchase as a signal to produce more unnecessarily large routers. Those people paid to make the unnecessary routers could have used their valuable skills elsewhere. They may convince more people to learn how to build unnecessary routers instead of something more valuable. It's waste all the way down.
    - cma 14y ago
      Not exactly, unless you think those people will literally use their salaries from the activities you described to buy something and go out and burn it. It might be a mis-distribution, and it might spur misguided investment in an area, but it isn't all squandered to the tune of exactly $20,000 or anywhere close to that. The marginal cost is a much more accurate measure.
spydum 15y ago
it's sad, but nothing new. either verizon is lying about who asked for the specific model, or some inexperienced network "architect" decided not to do the due diligence to spec out what was required, and just asked for the moon.
dstroot 15y ago
Private sector FTW. Please, please I hope everyone who reads this begins to understand that governments are not meant to allocate resources. The idea (promoted by politicians, mostly democrats) that we should give the government our money and they will spend it wisely "for the betterment of all" is purely, simply and fundamentally flawed. Out government should be small. It should perform a few basic functions like making sure we are secure, our trading interests are promoted and our banking and financial markets are healthy. It should educate our children to the best standards in the world. Finally it should make sure we are energy independent and our food and water is uncontaminated. That's pretty much it.
- epoxyhockey 15y ago
  Please don't make this a democrat/republican debate. This is the crooked way that all of our US government is spending our tax money. We need corporate money out of politics if we want to prevent these outlandish contracts from being awarded to the corporations that donate enough money to campaigns. It's not a democrat/republican or big/small government thing. It's about corruption of the system. Out of your comment, I agree most with that our government needs to help educate our children. Without an educated population, things only get worse.
  - clarky07 15y ago
    how is this not a big/small government thing? We gave away billions of dollars in a stimulus program with little to no oversight that is very clearly getting wasted here. While the republicans are certainly guilty of lots of spending and many things, democrats are clearly the party that is guilty of more spending and even bigger government.
    - _delirium 15y ago
      There are plenty of countries whose governments are far to the left of the Democrats who spend money much more wisely, so I don't see it as inherently tied. For example, the Scandinavian countries have much larger governments proportionally, but generally spend more wisely, and have more transparent bidding/provisioning of their state-funded services, so they get more service and less waste in return for their money.
guylhem 15y ago
Spending other people money is so easy. But $22k apiece instead of the $485 solution quoted in the article - that's madness. It can't be just gross incompetence. I guess someone involved in the decision got some kind of kickback, gift, or will have a nice cushy job offer waiting for them at Cisco when they get fired as they should be. Remember this article next time some liberal ask to raise taxes and justifies this by saying how stimulus money is important, and why everyone should have the same opportunities (quoted in the article - as if a 22k router gave any kind of opportunity to people browsing the net in a public library in WV). And cry when they get trashed at the end of their lifecycle without having ever been connected to optic fiber.
- gjkood 15y ago
  "Remember this article next time some liberal ask to raise taxes..." Unless I misread, the article is talking about West Virginia. I would hardly call WV a bastion of liberal thinking. Never attribute to malice (or political leaning) that which is adequately explained by stupidity (or incompetence)
  - gwright 15y ago
    You're right. This isn't a "liberal" failing. Wasteful government spending is an affliction that spans the entire political spectrum.
    - chmod777 15y ago
      Democrats controlled two of West Virginia's three House seats, both Senate seats, the Governor's mansion, and the state legislature (which they have held since 1928). One of West Virginia's two current Democrat senators, Joe Manchin, was governor at the time of the stimulus and appointed Mr. Gianato. The executive branch of the federal government in 2009-2010 was controlled by the Democrats, along with both houses of congress. The federal stimulus was passed with no Republican support. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/us/politics/29obama.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/us/politics/29obama.html The entire chain of custody from the grant through request for bids through the eventual approval was controlled by Democrats. The only people involved in this fiasco without a (D) after their name are those people who will have their taxes raised in order to pay for these routers, because of course they were not paid for with existing revenue. This is very much a failing of Democrat administrations at a federal, state and local levels.
deleted 15y ago
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franze 15y ago
why do military closets cost 5000$ a piece? because it costs a sh#tload of money to sell the military a closet. i don't know where i read this but it is a great analogy. i have been - in my time (2000? 2001? 2002? 2003? 2004? ...) - involved into selling the national austrian television their first video streaming solution (think: free (as in free beer) windows media streaming server) - it took man-years. man-years cost money.
- quink 15y ago
  I want to punch you in the face. ORF's IPTV stuff has been 100% unusable until the Mediathek came along. I could further elaborate on the reasons why this matters to me, but I'm just relieved that it works OK now.
  - franze 15y ago
    yeah, i felt guilty for years. glad it's gone now.
mikescar 15y ago
"West Virginia Homeland Security chief Jimmy Gianato, who's leading the state broadband project, defended the $24 million router purchase last week, saying the devices "could meet many different needs and be used for multiple applications." "Our main concerns were to not have something that would become obsolete in a couple of years," Gianato said. "Looking at how technology evolves, we wanted something that was scalable, expandable and viable, five to 10 years out. We wanted to make sure every place had the same opportunity across the state." Wow. I've spent some time in West Virginia libraries, and yes the internet connection was slow, but it's not due to the router. And in most towns, libraries and schools are not going to be serving anyone outside their walls with some kind of WAN. Best case will be public wireless near the building. And how is it that the "West Virginia Homeland Security chief" is "leading the state broadband project"? Seems like bureaucratic overreach, technical ignorance, and budget authority all wrapped in. Why not spend $50 for a router for libraries and something less than $22k per school?
- dfc 15y ago
  What decent router costs $50? That blue soho router your thinking of is for your mom's house not a statewide installation.
  - mikescar 15y ago
    A router that can handle 5-30 clients at current internet speed standards within a library setting. Yes, bigger installations could benefit from a $20k router, but the vast majority of these routers are a complete waste of money in WV outside of Charleston and Morgantown. Unless there is some big backbone being built that can service a mostly small-town and very mountainous state, spending $20k (each!) now so that your routing infrastructure within schools and libraries won't be too slow in a couple years is kinda crazy.
    - wpietri 15y ago
      I run my office network off of a $50 router quite happily. But that's because I'm right there to take care of it. Earlier this year, for example, our network got a fever: http://nerdfeed.needfeed.com/blog/2012/02/our-network-has-a-fever/ http://nerdfeed.needfeed.com/blog/2012/02/our-network-has-a-... If I needed to cover 1,000 widely scattered locations for the next decade, there is no way I would try to do that with a bunch of consumer-grade stuff. Especially when trying to manage a bunch of existing T1s and a conversion to fiber.
ghshephard 15y ago
To be clear, from the article, the routers themselves cost $7,800. And, if I'm rolling out a state infrastructure, and wondering what I can put in place for the next 10 years to serve as a foundation, you could certainly do worse than the 3945 - it's a very flexible ISR, and, all-things being equal, it's probably not worth the hassle of putting 2921s in some locations and 3945s in others. Who knows how much bandwidth you'll want on these high-speed fiber connections 5+ years from now - the 3945 is rated for 350 megabits/second (with features), the 2921 tops out at 75 megabits. Amortized over 10 years, I would have chosen the 3945 everywhere versus sticking 2921s in some places (the ISR that would have been an alternative) and 3945s in others. Single Security Policy. Single IOS update Policy. Zero doubt as to what features will run in a particular location. I think what most people have difficulty with is that they are comparing this decision to roll out a state communications infrastructure with the fact that they can go connect a $60 linksys wrt54G in their house and serve a dozen people without breaking a sweat. And get wireless as well! The issues involved in scaling that across the state, while looking to the future, and managing all that gear is a different challenge though. I don't see any huge scandal here.
- clarky07 15y ago
  That seems like a pretty silly argument to me. The library with 4 computers would be just fine with the $60 router. How is it any harder to manage that gear compared to managing the completely unneeded equipment that the local employees have no clue how to run. Not to mention spending $14k on upgrades for many places that don't need that particular upgrade. I don't care if it's a little simpler to buy all the same, it's absurd to spend millions and millions of taxpayer dollars on something that is completely unnecessary.
  - glesica 15y ago
    I'm not really sure where it came from, but the Slashdot summary states that a lot of these things were never even un-boxed. If true, that's an incredible waste and far-outweighs any convenience or stability benefits gained by using homogeneous hardware. http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/05/11/1937235/west-virginia-buys-22k-routers-with-stimulus-puts-them-in-small-schools http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/05/11/1937235/west-virginia...
jsz0 15y ago
I'm surprised this article actually does a decent job covering both sides of the story. When you look at how flexible the ISRs are, and the likelihood these devices will be in service for probably the next 10 years or more, it's not not the worst investment they could make. They're actually well sized for the high schools and other larger sites. Obviously any 3900 series is going to be overkill for a little library but you do have to look at support costs, service contracts, future requirements, future upgrade costs, etc to get the full picture. This is not a 'bridge to nowhere' situation.
- nknight 15y ago
  You can get an ASA 5505 firewall with all the features you'll ever need for a small library installation for about $1200 retail (hell of a lot less if you're buying, say, 50 of them), and any network engineer who can't handle ASA configuration in his sleep should be fired immediately for gross incompetence. There is no excuse for this insanity.
GreyTheory 15y ago
> Our main concerns were to not have something that would become obsolete in a couple of years No you fool! These are designed to handle large loads, not protection from obsolescence!
dfc 15y ago
The price includes maintenance and support correct? Its 22k for the metal only?
dfc 15y ago
The price includes maintenance and support correct? It is not 22k for the metal only?
DarkStarX1 15y ago
The "state" is completely clueless. You don't spec out technology for 10 years down the road anymore. The pace changes too quickly. You get the most affordable solution NOW, and when you need the big stuff you get something recent with even more longevity. The decision they made was stupid from a thousand angles. Retarded.
patrickgzill 15y ago
Am I the only person that is (not really of course!) tempted to put on official-looking clothing and confidently walk in with a laptop and Cisco console cable, nonchalantly telling the librarian their "Internet box" "needs a service upgrade". And then quietly replace it (after dumping the config and replicating the configuration) with a $100 half-depth Supermicro server bought off Ebay, running OpenBSD? And then walk out, like the Grinch after he artfully puts Cindy Lou Who to bed, with a nice new 3945 for my own use? EDIT: forgot to mention, I need a CF card reader also to get the config off the Cisco flash.
- jeffpersonified 15y ago
  At least you'd be creating some value with those tax dollars.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- c4urself 15y ago
  Thinking the exact same thing -- there are plenty of libraries to choose from...
- smithian 15y ago
  If you then sold the router on the second-hand market and gave the money to the library to spend on materials that they actually needed, your plan could do some real good.
- doughj3 14y ago
  Considering you're talking about pulling the config off flash, which is where the OS and not the config is stored, I'm not too worried about what you plan to do.
waiwai933 15y ago
From the article: "I'm not an expert on the technical side," [Gianato] said, "but these have all kinds of capabilities and applications." Earlier: "Gianato acknowledged that he didn't heed Dunlap's advice or wait for an evaluation. 'The routers already had been bid out,' Gianato said. 'I think John was looking at our needs now, not looking at our needs into the future." --- So not only does Gianato admit he doesn't know anything (which means he's not even suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect), but he also admits that he's not sure what his IT advisor was thinking about, but, eh, it doesn't really matter because the people who are the experts obviously don't think about the long-term and I'm not going to bother asking them about it anyway, because as we all know, bids are binding contracts. Right.
sbov 15y ago
> Gianato said putting the same size router in every school was about "equal opportunity." A little known fact in the tech community is that a $7,800 router provides exactly 16.016 times more opportunity to a student than a $487 router.
- tatsuke95 15y ago
  All the tubes have to to be the same size. It's only fair.
patrickgzill 15y ago
Verizon has successfully siphoned a bunch of money from the govt and by extension, taxpayers, yet again. Anyone familiar with telecom and living in PA, WV, other states that have Verizon as the ILEC, knows this.
jeffpersonified 15y ago
This is why I'm a libertarian.
georgieporgie 15y ago
Regarding planning for the future, this seems like someone who was used to buying machinery was put in charge of buying technology. Sure, in five years the library might need a gigabit of bandwidth, but by then the Linksys WRT may well handle it for $100. It's not like you're buying a work truck, which may well serve the government for 5, 10, or even 15 years (assuming low usage), or a lathe that might be used intermittently for 35 years. There's a lot to be said for uniformity in deployment, but that's why you would define, say, three tiers of supported hardware instead of kitting out everyone with top-of-the-line.
jaredmck 15y ago
Interestingly, the CEO of Cisco is from West Virginia and went to WVU - I believe he's one of the largest donors to WVU. (only know this because I'm also from WV, not suggesting any conspiracy here)
niels_olson 15y ago
I have a buddy who sells routing equipment at this level. Doesn't have a degree in Fahrenheit, but just cleared a mil in his bank account, owns his 6 bedroom Connecticut home outright and keeps a beach house in Mystic. He's 38. I'm 36, a doc, and still paying off student loans and working for Uncle Sam.
Klinky 15y ago
Sounds like a buffoon was in charge of the operation. Gianato suggesting that the unused/unneeded T1 interface cards could still be used for "video conferencing, wireless Internet and "voice over Internet protocol." is just painful to read. I am not sure how they can be used for such things if you don't actually stick them in a router! I would still like to see a breakdown of the costs and what services are provided with the routers before I call it a total waste though. If it was just the routers then it was a waste. If it includes other things like a long term warranty & onsite service, then maybe not so much.
- frankydp 15y ago
  Some one should request a detailed FOIA.
mehulkar 15y ago
What piece of technology will stay relevant `5-10 years out`?!?
suhastech 15y ago
Similar story in India would be like "State paid $20k each for Internet routers worth $20"
tylermenezes 15y ago
Hacker News, you continue to disappoint me. Every time I read an article, I know the comments are going to be filled with people arguing for the sake of feeling superior. And once again, they are. No. This is not okay. No twisted sense of reason that only you have makes it okay. A $60 consumer router that needs to be upgraded every year is still cheaper than this. Even with support costs. People have been rolling out tiered infrastructure for years.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
luminaobscura 15y ago
i live in a developing country. I am thinking what would happen here if a state offical had 24 million in his hands to spend on the infrastructure? The official may be corrupt and this thing may never go to proper bidding. So official and a company would share say 10 million as the profit. But 14 million would still go to something useful. In this story, at least 20 million of the money seems to be completely wasted. (Higher capacity router does not mean better internet access for 4-computer lib.) Wait, not finished. So our corrupt official has 2 million in his hands. He may buy a car or a house, but probably he would spend it for something useful. So much of the value would return to the market. This is also true for the vendor company. But in the US case, the value is gone. it is like you burned the cash. Moral of the story: stupidity is more dangerous than corruption. You may want to have a corrupt offical than a stupid one. Finally, that stupid would never have survived in the relatively corrupt but wild political system of my country.
- doyoulikeworms 15y ago
  Yours is the most bizarre, vaguely chauvinistic straw man rant that I've ever read.
  - luminaobscura 15y ago
    where is the straw man?
- sparkie 15y ago
  In politics, stupidity is not a handicap
keithpeter 15y ago
HN-ers I'm not a programmer or technical person, I'm an end user who uses R, LaTeX and processing now and again. I hack an awesome spreadsheet. I have a degree and I do a professional job. I could be a manager in a public service or an elected representative. Perhaps in a small rural authority. Given the lack of consensus in this discussion thread, and evidence in the article of a similar lack of consensus between the various offices involved, how am I supposed to reach a decision? Is there a case for some kind of planning toolkit or requirements estimation software? Is there an opportunity here? PS: I and other colleagues did once have to help a senior manager spend out a £250k capital grant in 10 days. The idiotic spending deadline was due to delay in award of funds in a competitive funding round. We did ok but could have done better with another month or two to think through detailed requirements.
- Daniel_Newby 15y ago
  > Given the lack of consensus in this discussion thread, and evidence in the article of a similar lack of consensus between the various offices involved, how am I supposed to reach a decision? 1. You ask people who have already done this, like hotels who deploy thousands of networked sites. 2. You hold a bakeoff at a few dozen sites and see what works.
  - keithpeter 15y ago
    Yup, in my previous job that is exactly what we did, we found other Colleges who had done similar stuff and asked them how they did it. I noticed some went for a 5 year sort of rolling provision making assumptions about increased traffic (but certainly no gold plating like in the original article) and others just bought what would work now and dealt with changes as they arose. I have to say that the former strategy seemed to provide a more uniform system with less 'catches'. People don't share budgets so I have no idea which came in cheaper.
- amalag 15y ago
  You use your intelligence. The Cisco person says you can do what you want with $500. Then do you continue to spend $30k instead? Do you think your small town library is going to grow into a college campus (as the other pro-mega-router people are expecting)
ChristianMarks 15y ago
West Virginia Homeland Security must be planning for a truly unprecedented expansion of libraries and schools, based on the capacity of the routers and the number of them allocated to sites with a handful of users. This is heartening, especially during a period of massive cutbacks to public education. ;)
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- ChristianMarks 15y ago
  Most of this is in practice amounts to the justification of bureaucrats too lazy to do a proper analysis. I work with them and this is exactly the generalized rubbish they spout--it NEVER gets deeper than this. Details are never forthcoming. Instead we have self-serving nonsense about the difficulty of maintaining databases of router configurations. It's as if remote management facilities don't exist--you tell your superiors that you're still upgrading IOS with TFTP, so you need all the routers to be the same. You haven't mentioned the article once. What do you think the probability of expanding a small library from four users to 50 is in this economic climate? Did you read that the stimulus was for the installation of fiber? Instead the state got routers equipped with T1 modules.
kirillzubovsky 15y ago
When a public school/library buys a 22K router with government money, sounds like an overkill (handout) of massive proportions. Someone's cousin here was probably on the Cisco + Verizon sales team. This is frustrating. I remember a few weeks ago PB made a comment that at least social networks and alike make it easier to spread the news, which eventually will lead to greater good (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3890543 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3890543). At least that's true, but doesn't feel like it's enough.
timurlenk 15y ago
I see a lot of posters argueing about the type of cisco router that should have been used or if a soho Linksys router should have been used instead. Assuming that the government has some rules that requires them not to deploy soho or open source products and they have to spend the money on some big brand company: how come Juniper was not taken into consideration (or other known network vendors)? I would argue that Juniper could provide cheaper equipment of simmilar of higher spec (let's ignore for a moment if that is oversized or not) - and it becomes even cheaper if you consider the simpler licensing terms and upgrade support. Isn't the government supposed to run open tenders? Is cisco mandatory in the US?
forgottenpaswrd 15y ago
Time to connect the entire neighborhood to those machines and share the cost /administration.
PaulAnunda 15y ago
Smh, so much waste.
shane_mcd 15y ago
This is absolutely disgusting to me. The people that run big and small government in this country are complete idiots.
graylights 15y ago
Most of these places don't know what the box is and when Johnny down the street comes in to fix their internet it will be replaced by a blue soho router. There will be theft and waste and probably 20% of these will be missing within a couple years. A librarian will notice a computer missing, but an expensive router replaced with a cheap one won't even be noticed for years.

148 points by Lazare 15y ago

sakai 15y ago

Well... at least they got high-powered routers for $22K apiece. But, it's a shame there isn't a law on the books that selling the government something at 50X the market price / need is fraud.* * Yes, I realize this would bankrupt half the military contractors as well.

clarky07 15y ago
Can't blame them for selling them something they asked for. Who's to say they were even told what they were for. This is government waste and incompetence, nothing more. You are correct on the military contractors as well though. Lots of government waste and incompetence there as well.

conformal 15y ago

wow. somehow i doubt these sites have multiple uplinks, so they certainly don't need BGP routers. even if they're doing IPSec between some locations this can be handled by an old piece-of-junk $100 computer running BSD or nix, e.g. with isakmpd and pf. stuff like this is why america's infrastructure is crumbling: dodgy contractors looking for an excuse to upcharge municipalities for irrelevant gear and services.

mahmud 15y ago
Here in Australia, our local DMV (RTA) is all MacBook Pros, all running Windows XP in virtualization. Would love to meet the dipshit that authorized this travesty.
dfc 15y ago
You really want to advocate installing "old piece of junk" routers across the entire state? Have you ever managed a project this large? And if so did you use old piece of junk equipment?
- sk5t 15y ago
  $500-1k appliances with Atom CPUs running pfSense, please, not $100 clunkers with spinning drives and dust-laden fans. Anything more than that for a moderately large library or most schools is an outlandish, shameful waste of money and equipment.

8ig8 15y ago

I describe this as 'funny money'. The government is spending other people's money. I imagine the government worker that signed off on this purchase worrying a lot more about a dollar increase in the local lunch special than millions spent on equipment.

cma 15y ago
It is also funny money because the marginal cost of producing one of these routers is more like $500, not $20k. It is just a transfer payment to the company, it isn't the same as if the government burned $20k worth of barrels of oil. Nothing near that amount in resources was actually wasted.
- msellout 15y ago
  Not quite. Cisco will probably take this purchase as a signal to produce more unnecessarily large routers. Those people paid to make the unnecessary routers could have used their valuable skills elsewhere. They may convince more people to learn how to build unnecessary routers instead of something more valuable. It's waste all the way down.
  - cma 14y ago
    Not exactly, unless you think those people will literally use their salaries from the activities you described to buy something and go out and burn it. It might be a mis-distribution, and it might spur misguided investment in an area, but it isn't all squandered to the tune of exactly $20,000 or anywhere close to that. The marginal cost is a much more accurate measure.

spydum 15y ago

it's sad, but nothing new. either verizon is lying about who asked for the specific model, or some inexperienced network "architect" decided not to do the due diligence to spec out what was required, and just asked for the moon.

dstroot 15y ago

Private sector FTW. Please, please I hope everyone who reads this begins to understand that governments are not meant to allocate resources. The idea (promoted by politicians, mostly democrats) that we should give the government our money and they will spend it wisely "for the betterment of all" is purely, simply and fundamentally flawed. Out government should be small. It should perform a few basic functions like making sure we are secure, our trading interests are promoted and our banking and financial markets are healthy. It should educate our children to the best standards in the world. Finally it should make sure we are energy independent and our food and water is uncontaminated. That's pretty much it.

epoxyhockey 15y ago
Please don't make this a democrat/republican debate. This is the crooked way that all of our US government is spending our tax money. We need corporate money out of politics if we want to prevent these outlandish contracts from being awarded to the corporations that donate enough money to campaigns. It's not a democrat/republican or big/small government thing. It's about corruption of the system. Out of your comment, I agree most with that our government needs to help educate our children. Without an educated population, things only get worse.
- clarky07 15y ago
  how is this not a big/small government thing? We gave away billions of dollars in a stimulus program with little to no oversight that is very clearly getting wasted here. While the republicans are certainly guilty of lots of spending and many things, democrats are clearly the party that is guilty of more spending and even bigger government.
  - _delirium 15y ago
    There are plenty of countries whose governments are far to the left of the Democrats who spend money much more wisely, so I don't see it as inherently tied. For example, the Scandinavian countries have much larger governments proportionally, but generally spend more wisely, and have more transparent bidding/provisioning of their state-funded services, so they get more service and less waste in return for their money.

guylhem 15y ago

Spending other people money is so easy. But $22k apiece instead of the $485 solution quoted in the article - that's madness. It can't be just gross incompetence. I guess someone involved in the decision got some kind of kickback, gift, or will have a nice cushy job offer waiting for them at Cisco when they get fired as they should be. Remember this article next time some liberal ask to raise taxes and justifies this by saying how stimulus money is important, and why everyone should have the same opportunities (quoted in the article - as if a 22k router gave any kind of opportunity to people browsing the net in a public library in WV). And cry when they get trashed at the end of their lifecycle without having ever been connected to optic fiber.

gjkood 15y ago
"Remember this article next time some liberal ask to raise taxes..." Unless I misread, the article is talking about West Virginia. I would hardly call WV a bastion of liberal thinking. Never attribute to malice (or political leaning) that which is adequately explained by stupidity (or incompetence)
- gwright 15y ago
  You're right. This isn't a "liberal" failing. Wasteful government spending is an affliction that spans the entire political spectrum.
  - chmod777 15y ago
    Democrats controlled two of West Virginia's three House seats, both Senate seats, the Governor's mansion, and the state legislature (which they have held since 1928). One of West Virginia's two current Democrat senators, Joe Manchin, was governor at the time of the stimulus and appointed Mr. Gianato. The executive branch of the federal government in 2009-2010 was controlled by the Democrats, along with both houses of congress. The federal stimulus was passed with no Republican support. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/us/politics/29obama.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/us/politics/29obama.html The entire chain of custody from the grant through request for bids through the eventual approval was controlled by Democrats. The only people involved in this fiasco without a (D) after their name are those people who will have their taxes raised in order to pay for these routers, because of course they were not paid for with existing revenue. This is very much a failing of Democrat administrations at a federal, state and local levels.

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franze 15y ago

why do military closets cost 5000$ a piece? because it costs a sh#tload of money to sell the military a closet. i don't know where i read this but it is a great analogy. i have been - in my time (2000? 2001? 2002? 2003? 2004? ...) - involved into selling the national austrian television their first video streaming solution (think: free (as in free beer) windows media streaming server) - it took man-years. man-years cost money.

quink 15y ago
I want to punch you in the face. ORF's IPTV stuff has been 100% unusable until the Mediathek came along. I could further elaborate on the reasons why this matters to me, but I'm just relieved that it works OK now.
- franze 15y ago
  yeah, i felt guilty for years. glad it's gone now.

mikescar 15y ago

"West Virginia Homeland Security chief Jimmy Gianato, who's leading the state broadband project, defended the $24 million router purchase last week, saying the devices "could meet many different needs and be used for multiple applications." "Our main concerns were to not have something that would become obsolete in a couple of years," Gianato said. "Looking at how technology evolves, we wanted something that was scalable, expandable and viable, five to 10 years out. We wanted to make sure every place had the same opportunity across the state." Wow. I've spent some time in West Virginia libraries, and yes the internet connection was slow, but it's not due to the router. And in most towns, libraries and schools are not going to be serving anyone outside their walls with some kind of WAN. Best case will be public wireless near the building. And how is it that the "West Virginia Homeland Security chief" is "leading the state broadband project"? Seems like bureaucratic overreach, technical ignorance, and budget authority all wrapped in. Why not spend $50 for a router for libraries and something less than $22k per school?

dfc 15y ago
What decent router costs $50? That blue soho router your thinking of is for your mom's house not a statewide installation.
- mikescar 15y ago
  A router that can handle 5-30 clients at current internet speed standards within a library setting. Yes, bigger installations could benefit from a $20k router, but the vast majority of these routers are a complete waste of money in WV outside of Charleston and Morgantown. Unless there is some big backbone being built that can service a mostly small-town and very mountainous state, spending $20k (each!) now so that your routing infrastructure within schools and libraries won't be too slow in a couple years is kinda crazy.
  - wpietri 15y ago
    I run my office network off of a $50 router quite happily. But that's because I'm right there to take care of it. Earlier this year, for example, our network got a fever: http://nerdfeed.needfeed.com/blog/2012/02/our-network-has-a-fever/ http://nerdfeed.needfeed.com/blog/2012/02/our-network-has-a-... If I needed to cover 1,000 widely scattered locations for the next decade, there is no way I would try to do that with a bunch of consumer-grade stuff. Especially when trying to manage a bunch of existing T1s and a conversion to fiber.

ghshephard 15y ago

To be clear, from the article, the routers themselves cost $7,800. And, if I'm rolling out a state infrastructure, and wondering what I can put in place for the next 10 years to serve as a foundation, you could certainly do worse than the 3945 - it's a very flexible ISR, and, all-things being equal, it's probably not worth the hassle of putting 2921s in some locations and 3945s in others. Who knows how much bandwidth you'll want on these high-speed fiber connections 5+ years from now - the 3945 is rated for 350 megabits/second (with features), the 2921 tops out at 75 megabits. Amortized over 10 years, I would have chosen the 3945 everywhere versus sticking 2921s in some places (the ISR that would have been an alternative) and 3945s in others. Single Security Policy. Single IOS update Policy. Zero doubt as to what features will run in a particular location. I think what most people have difficulty with is that they are comparing this decision to roll out a state communications infrastructure with the fact that they can go connect a $60 linksys wrt54G in their house and serve a dozen people without breaking a sweat. And get wireless as well! The issues involved in scaling that across the state, while looking to the future, and managing all that gear is a different challenge though. I don't see any huge scandal here.

clarky07 15y ago
That seems like a pretty silly argument to me. The library with 4 computers would be just fine with the $60 router. How is it any harder to manage that gear compared to managing the completely unneeded equipment that the local employees have no clue how to run. Not to mention spending $14k on upgrades for many places that don't need that particular upgrade. I don't care if it's a little simpler to buy all the same, it's absurd to spend millions and millions of taxpayer dollars on something that is completely unnecessary.
- glesica 15y ago
  I'm not really sure where it came from, but the Slashdot summary states that a lot of these things were never even un-boxed. If true, that's an incredible waste and far-outweighs any convenience or stability benefits gained by using homogeneous hardware. http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/05/11/1937235/west-virginia-buys-22k-routers-with-stimulus-puts-them-in-small-schools http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/05/11/1937235/west-virginia...

jsz0 15y ago

I'm surprised this article actually does a decent job covering both sides of the story. When you look at how flexible the ISRs are, and the likelihood these devices will be in service for probably the next 10 years or more, it's not not the worst investment they could make. They're actually well sized for the high schools and other larger sites. Obviously any 3900 series is going to be overkill for a little library but you do have to look at support costs, service contracts, future requirements, future upgrade costs, etc to get the full picture. This is not a 'bridge to nowhere' situation.

nknight 15y ago
You can get an ASA 5505 firewall with all the features you'll ever need for a small library installation for about $1200 retail (hell of a lot less if you're buying, say, 50 of them), and any network engineer who can't handle ASA configuration in his sleep should be fired immediately for gross incompetence. There is no excuse for this insanity.

GreyTheory 15y ago

> Our main concerns were to not have something that would become obsolete in a couple of years No you fool! These are designed to handle large loads, not protection from obsolescence!

dfc 15y ago

The price includes maintenance and support correct? Its 22k for the metal only?

dfc 15y ago

The price includes maintenance and support correct? It is not 22k for the metal only?

DarkStarX1 15y ago

The "state" is completely clueless. You don't spec out technology for 10 years down the road anymore. The pace changes too quickly. You get the most affordable solution NOW, and when you need the big stuff you get something recent with even more longevity. The decision they made was stupid from a thousand angles. Retarded.

patrickgzill 15y ago

Am I the only person that is (not really of course!) tempted to put on official-looking clothing and confidently walk in with a laptop and Cisco console cable, nonchalantly telling the librarian their "Internet box" "needs a service upgrade". And then quietly replace it (after dumping the config and replicating the configuration) with a $100 half-depth Supermicro server bought off Ebay, running OpenBSD? And then walk out, like the Grinch after he artfully puts Cindy Lou Who to bed, with a nice new 3945 for my own use? EDIT: forgot to mention, I need a CF card reader also to get the config off the Cisco flash.

jeffpersonified 15y ago
At least you'd be creating some value with those tax dollars.
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c4urself 15y ago
Thinking the exact same thing -- there are plenty of libraries to choose from...
smithian 15y ago
If you then sold the router on the second-hand market and gave the money to the library to spend on materials that they actually needed, your plan could do some real good.
doughj3 14y ago
Considering you're talking about pulling the config off flash, which is where the OS and not the config is stored, I'm not too worried about what you plan to do.

waiwai933 15y ago

From the article: "I'm not an expert on the technical side," [Gianato] said, "but these have all kinds of capabilities and applications." Earlier: "Gianato acknowledged that he didn't heed Dunlap's advice or wait for an evaluation. 'The routers already had been bid out,' Gianato said. 'I think John was looking at our needs now, not looking at our needs into the future." --- So not only does Gianato admit he doesn't know anything (which means he's not even suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect), but he also admits that he's not sure what his IT advisor was thinking about, but, eh, it doesn't really matter because the people who are the experts obviously don't think about the long-term and I'm not going to bother asking them about it anyway, because as we all know, bids are binding contracts. Right.

sbov 15y ago

> Gianato said putting the same size router in every school was about "equal opportunity." A little known fact in the tech community is that a $7,800 router provides exactly 16.016 times more opportunity to a student than a $487 router.

tatsuke95 15y ago
All the tubes have to to be the same size. It's only fair.

patrickgzill 15y ago

Verizon has successfully siphoned a bunch of money from the govt and by extension, taxpayers, yet again. Anyone familiar with telecom and living in PA, WV, other states that have Verizon as the ILEC, knows this.

jeffpersonified 15y ago

This is why I'm a libertarian.

georgieporgie 15y ago

Regarding planning for the future, this seems like someone who was used to buying machinery was put in charge of buying technology. Sure, in five years the library might need a gigabit of bandwidth, but by then the Linksys WRT may well handle it for $100. It's not like you're buying a work truck, which may well serve the government for 5, 10, or even 15 years (assuming low usage), or a lathe that might be used intermittently for 35 years. There's a lot to be said for uniformity in deployment, but that's why you would define, say, three tiers of supported hardware instead of kitting out everyone with top-of-the-line.

jaredmck 15y ago

Interestingly, the CEO of Cisco is from West Virginia and went to WVU - I believe he's one of the largest donors to WVU. (only know this because I'm also from WV, not suggesting any conspiracy here)

niels_olson 15y ago

I have a buddy who sells routing equipment at this level. Doesn't have a degree in Fahrenheit, but just cleared a mil in his bank account, owns his 6 bedroom Connecticut home outright and keeps a beach house in Mystic. He's 38. I'm 36, a doc, and still paying off student loans and working for Uncle Sam.

Klinky 15y ago

Sounds like a buffoon was in charge of the operation. Gianato suggesting that the unused/unneeded T1 interface cards could still be used for "video conferencing, wireless Internet and "voice over Internet protocol." is just painful to read. I am not sure how they can be used for such things if you don't actually stick them in a router! I would still like to see a breakdown of the costs and what services are provided with the routers before I call it a total waste though. If it was just the routers then it was a waste. If it includes other things like a long term warranty & onsite service, then maybe not so much.

frankydp 15y ago
Some one should request a detailed FOIA.

mehulkar 15y ago

What piece of technology will stay relevant `5-10 years out`?!?

suhastech 15y ago

Similar story in India would be like "State paid $20k each for Internet routers worth $20"

tylermenezes 15y ago

Hacker News, you continue to disappoint me. Every time I read an article, I know the comments are going to be filled with people arguing for the sake of feeling superior. And once again, they are. No. This is not okay. No twisted sense of reason that only you have makes it okay. A $60 consumer router that needs to be upgraded every year is still cheaper than this. Even with support costs. People have been rolling out tiered infrastructure for years.

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luminaobscura 15y ago

i live in a developing country. I am thinking what would happen here if a state offical had 24 million in his hands to spend on the infrastructure? The official may be corrupt and this thing may never go to proper bidding. So official and a company would share say 10 million as the profit. But 14 million would still go to something useful. In this story, at least 20 million of the money seems to be completely wasted. (Higher capacity router does not mean better internet access for 4-computer lib.) Wait, not finished. So our corrupt official has 2 million in his hands. He may buy a car or a house, but probably he would spend it for something useful. So much of the value would return to the market. This is also true for the vendor company. But in the US case, the value is gone. it is like you burned the cash. Moral of the story: stupidity is more dangerous than corruption. You may want to have a corrupt offical than a stupid one. Finally, that stupid would never have survived in the relatively corrupt but wild political system of my country.

doyoulikeworms 15y ago
Yours is the most bizarre, vaguely chauvinistic straw man rant that I've ever read.
- luminaobscura 15y ago
  where is the straw man?
sparkie 15y ago
In politics, stupidity is not a handicap

keithpeter 15y ago

HN-ers I'm not a programmer or technical person, I'm an end user who uses R, LaTeX and processing now and again. I hack an awesome spreadsheet. I have a degree and I do a professional job. I could be a manager in a public service or an elected representative. Perhaps in a small rural authority. Given the lack of consensus in this discussion thread, and evidence in the article of a similar lack of consensus between the various offices involved, how am I supposed to reach a decision? Is there a case for some kind of planning toolkit or requirements estimation software? Is there an opportunity here? PS: I and other colleagues did once have to help a senior manager spend out a £250k capital grant in 10 days. The idiotic spending deadline was due to delay in award of funds in a competitive funding round. We did ok but could have done better with another month or two to think through detailed requirements.

Daniel_Newby 15y ago
> Given the lack of consensus in this discussion thread, and evidence in the article of a similar lack of consensus between the various offices involved, how am I supposed to reach a decision? 1. You ask people who have already done this, like hotels who deploy thousands of networked sites. 2. You hold a bakeoff at a few dozen sites and see what works.
- keithpeter 15y ago
  Yup, in my previous job that is exactly what we did, we found other Colleges who had done similar stuff and asked them how they did it. I noticed some went for a 5 year sort of rolling provision making assumptions about increased traffic (but certainly no gold plating like in the original article) and others just bought what would work now and dealt with changes as they arose. I have to say that the former strategy seemed to provide a more uniform system with less 'catches'. People don't share budgets so I have no idea which came in cheaper.
amalag 15y ago
You use your intelligence. The Cisco person says you can do what you want with $500. Then do you continue to spend $30k instead? Do you think your small town library is going to grow into a college campus (as the other pro-mega-router people are expecting)

ChristianMarks 15y ago

West Virginia Homeland Security must be planning for a truly unprecedented expansion of libraries and schools, based on the capacity of the routers and the number of them allocated to sites with a handful of users. This is heartening, especially during a period of massive cutbacks to public education. ;)

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ChristianMarks 15y ago
Most of this is in practice amounts to the justification of bureaucrats too lazy to do a proper analysis. I work with them and this is exactly the generalized rubbish they spout--it NEVER gets deeper than this. Details are never forthcoming. Instead we have self-serving nonsense about the difficulty of maintaining databases of router configurations. It's as if remote management facilities don't exist--you tell your superiors that you're still upgrading IOS with TFTP, so you need all the routers to be the same. You haven't mentioned the article once. What do you think the probability of expanding a small library from four users to 50 is in this economic climate? Did you read that the stimulus was for the installation of fiber? Instead the state got routers equipped with T1 modules.

kirillzubovsky 15y ago

When a public school/library buys a 22K router with government money, sounds like an overkill (handout) of massive proportions. Someone's cousin here was probably on the Cisco + Verizon sales team. This is frustrating. I remember a few weeks ago PB made a comment that at least social networks and alike make it easier to spread the news, which eventually will lead to greater good (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3890543 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3890543). At least that's true, but doesn't feel like it's enough.

timurlenk 15y ago

I see a lot of posters argueing about the type of cisco router that should have been used or if a soho Linksys router should have been used instead. Assuming that the government has some rules that requires them not to deploy soho or open source products and they have to spend the money on some big brand company: how come Juniper was not taken into consideration (or other known network vendors)? I would argue that Juniper could provide cheaper equipment of simmilar of higher spec (let's ignore for a moment if that is oversized or not) - and it becomes even cheaper if you consider the simpler licensing terms and upgrade support. Isn't the government supposed to run open tenders? Is cisco mandatory in the US?

forgottenpaswrd 15y ago

Time to connect the entire neighborhood to those machines and share the cost /administration.

PaulAnunda 15y ago

Smh, so much waste.

shane_mcd 15y ago

This is absolutely disgusting to me. The people that run big and small government in this country are complete idiots.

graylights 15y ago

Most of these places don't know what the box is and when Johnny down the street comes in to fix their internet it will be replaced by a blue soho router. There will be theft and waste and probably 20% of these will be missing within a couple years. A librarian will notice a computer missing, but an expensive router replaced with a cheap one won't even be noticed for years.