White House IT overhaul an antique roadshow

The New York Times yesterday had an account of an ongoing effort to modernize the IT infrastructure and end-user equipment relied upon by those whose workplace address is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. In a sense, the story was rather alarming, as it turns out the White House was in sore need of just about new everything.

There were a couple of networking nuggets worth noting in the story.

First was the matter of old cabling … lots and lots of the stuff.

One of his first tasks was trying to map the miles of Ethernet cables and phone wires inside the walls of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The team of technicians eventually discovered and removed 13,000 pounds of abandoned cables that no longer served any purpose.

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Network World Paul McNamara