Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router [arstechnica.com]

Yes, this library has a Cisco 3945 router.

Marmet, West Virginia is a town of 1,500 people living in a thin ribbon along the banks of the Kanawha River just below Charleston. The town's public library is only open Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. It's housed in a small building the size of a trailer, which the state of West Virginia describes as an "extremely small facility with only one Internet connection." Which is why it's such a surprise to learn the Marmet Public Library runs this connection through a $15,000 to $20,000 Cisco 3945 router intended for "mid-size to large deployments," according to Cisco.

In an absolutely scathing report (PDF) [wv.us] just released by the state's legislative auditor, West Virginia officials are accused of overspending at least $5 million of federal money on such routers, installed indiscriminately in both large institutions and one-room libraries across the state. The routers were purchased without ever asking the state's libraries, cops, and schools what they needed. And when distributed, the expensive routers were passed out without much apparent care. The small town of Clay received seven of them to serve a total population of 491 people... and all seven routers were installed within only .44 miles of each other at a total cost of more than $100,000.

....

As for that $5+ million the state could have saved, it would have paid for 104 additional miles of fiber.

I remember hearing about this a while ago and I thought there was a thread here but I didn't find one.

Who bears the lions share of the blame here? Cisco for putting forth a plan that they knew was overkill? The state for not properly reviewing the proposal? The process for not properly allowing other bids?

At least they didn't blow it on dinners like the coroner's office here does...wiggly [nola.com]

Quote from highfloydelity : Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router [arstechnica.com] Yes, this library has a Cisco 3945 router. Marmet, West Virginia is a town of 1,500 people living in a thin ribbon along the banks of the Kanawha River just below Charleston. The town's public library is only open Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. It's housed in a small building the size of a trailer, which the state of West Virginia describes as an "extremely small facility with only one Internet connection." Which is why it's such a surprise to learn the Marmet Public Library runs this connection through a $15,000 to $20,000 Cisco 3945 router intended for "mid-size to large deployments," according to Cisco. In an absolutely scathing report (PDF) [wv.us] just released by the state's legislative auditor, West Virginia officials are accused of overspending at least $5 million of federal money on such routers, installed indiscriminately in both large institutions and one-room libraries across the state. The routers were purchased without ever asking the state's libraries, cops, and schools what they needed. And when distributed, the expensive routers were passed out without much apparent care. The small town of Clay received seven of them to serve a total population of 491 people... and all seven routers were installed within only .44 miles of each other at a total cost of more than $100,000. .... As for that $5+ million the state could have saved, it would have paid for 104 additional miles of fiber. I remember hearing about this a while ago and I thought there was a thread here but I didn't find one. Who bears the lions share of the blame here? Cisco for putting forth a plan that they knew was overkill? The state for not properly reviewing the proposal? The process for not properly allowing other bids?

No, the people are to blame for allowing the federal government to get out of control. Period.

Quote from highfloydelity : Who bears the lions share of the blame here? Cisco for putting forth a plan that they knew was overkill? The state for not properly reviewing the proposal? The process for not properly allowing other bids?

Can't the blame be distributed equally?

Quote from ConservativeNYer : No, the people are to blame for allowing the federal government to get out of control. Period.

For a state-level issue?

I had a similar experience when I was in high school. Our district 833 in MN, ordered only 3com 905c network cards for the computers. Cost $75 each. Nearly identical alternative from linksys, $15. So they were paying $60 more than they needed to for every computer in the district. At the time there were around 6,000 computers in the district, so just under 1/4 million wasted. They ask for more money every election and usually get it.

In most areas of government we could cut 25% of our spending and still get more services if they were conducted in an effective and efficient way.

This is especially true in medical, military, and education. Lets stop being stupid and go after the low hanging fruit at least.

I suspect stuff like this is happening in more and more places in Miami after 9/11 this places popped up in record time. Its the exact opposite so huge, if you even drive by here or stop in your car the cops will question you. It has legitimate purposes but everyone knows its intercepting and monitoring for the NSA.

Bunker hiding in plain site. http://www.terremark.com/data-cen...ricas.aspx


750,000 square foot, purpose-built datacenter
Tier IV facility with N+2 power and cooling infrastructure
Equipment floors 32 feet above sea level
Roof slope designed to aid in drainage of floodwater in excess of 100-year storm intensity assisted by 18 rooftop drains
Designed to withstand a Category 5 hurricane with approximately 19 million pounds of concrete roof ballast
7 inch thick steel reinforced concrete exterior panels
The building is outside FEMA 500-year designated flood zone

Quote from ConservativeNYer : No, the people are to blame for allowing the federal government to get out of control. Period.

Quote from Frogstar : For a state-level issue?

The overreaching, and overtaxing federal government, is what encourages state and local officials to seek and spend as much in grants as they can, with little potential consequences from residents. After all, it's "federal money", who cares?

If the state of West Virginia needs routers, they should be buying them with West Virginia resident's tax money.

Quote from Frogstar : For a state-level issue?

Did you bother to read the article?

Quote from ConservativeNYer : Did you bother to read the article?

That's a well-thought out, cogent response.

This is just one small example of waste. Not much different than the $10,000 hammer or the $100,000 toilet seat. No accountability, that is what is to blame. The current president may suck, but this can't be blamed on him.

Our government is an animal without an anus. It can't take a dump, so it is literally full of sh!t. We pass laws to feed the government and make it grow, but we never remove anything. It's our nature. We need to change government to work with our nature. It needs an anus. I would propose we add expirations to all laws. Any law allocating money would expire more quickly. No law, other than the constitution, would have an expiration greater than 50 years. No law allocating money would have an expiration greater than 10 years. So in effect, if after 10 years we don't care enough to renew the law, we stop spending money on it.

At some point we need to realize we can't trust everyone in government to spend money intelligently. Maybe it's time we have a small group of folks who are basically the personal shoppers of government. They get the requests and send back the products. They can question and deny requests for unreasonable products or products that should require additional justification by the requester.

For federal we can start the EESA (Efficient and Effective Spending Administration.)

Quote from Frogstar : That's a well-thought out, cogent response.

Read it again and you'll see why I am blaming the federal government.

Quote from highfloydelity : Who bears the lions share of the blame here? Cisco for putting forth a plan that they knew was overkill? The state for not properly reviewing the proposal? The process for not properly allowing other bids?

I've seen the way companies just like Cisco do their sales pitches. They give you plenty of options with certain components they may advise. Give you the downsides of the cheaper equipment, upsides of more expensive etc.. It usually takes a group of people to make the decision of what to go with (and these people in state government / private etc..) normally know plenty about what's actually needed.

Not sure how Cisco is to blame.. Its like going to a car lot and asking for advise on a car that you do x,y and z. Well the $20k car do it.. but so can that Lamborghini over there and it can also do __, __, and ___. Is the salesman now at fault because you decided on the Lamborghini instead of the Hyundai? Or is the buyer at fault for being a moron?

it looks like the big issue was WV not doing research on what was needed in specific locations. I'm not sure how you can blame cisco for specifying identical routers as endpoints in a network when the needs of those endpoints were not differentiated.

WV sour grapes FTW!