Return to old school
I am not a Luddite. However, sometimes the old technology would do, where the new has taken root.
Case in point, the telephone. I carry a smartphone, and my monthly minutes use can be calculated using the fingers of one hand. At home, the wallphone serves only to interrupt life. And in the office; I would gladly return to the days of a rotary dial and a handset that could double as a defensive arm.
We use this: 
We used to use this: 
The new guy was doing some analysis, this afternoon, and spotted a MAC address connected to one of the switches that made no sense. (Analysts do stuff like that; the rest of the team busily fix problems). Anyhow, I determined, within seconds. (I’m fast at some things) that we were looking for a telephone handset. My database delivered a name and number.
And off, to spend time crawling under desks trying to find a “drop” belonging the seat in question. Back down to assure the correct connections on our switch panel. Back up to disconnect the phone and reconnect… and everything stopped.
The new telephone is actually a computer masquerading as something else. By connecting the handset to another drop, the “phone” received a complete new load of firmware, and before I left for the day, all was back in order. One small exception.
There is no logical explanation why the phone functioned until today. Wrong range of IP addresses. Wrong firmware. I’m sure that somewhere, an engineer knows the reason why. For the rest of us…
