[sdnog] ICT Budget

[Nishal Goburdhan]

On 18 Dec 2017, at 12:55, Henry Dola wrote:

> How do you do
> I come to you from a tertiary training institution with a student 
> population of 5000 and I project it will double this number in the 
> next couple of semesters. Teaching staff of 300 and about 200 support 
> staff.
> Currently am working on the annual budget and would greatly appreciate 
> your input. I am aware that we may not all be working in the same 
> sector but there are best practices which cut across the board and I 
> would like to leverage on these from you.
> I so far have on my list:
> A data centerIncreased bandwidth presently we are doing 19MbpsA 
> biometric kit with the projected capacity ( I am open to suggestions 
> upto and including access point brands, specs.)Roll out wireless 
> through out the institution. Presently doing ethernet ( I am open to 
> suggestions upto and including access point brands, specs.)Network and 
> Bandwidth monitoring SW
>
> Please feel free to improve this list and add any other information 
> and advice you deem relevant. Thank you.


your budget, SHOULD come from whatever your organisation goals are for 
the year and beyond.  as a random example, if one of your 
organisation’s objectives is to provide online e-learning by end 
quarter-3, then clearly, you’ll put more time and energy working on 
this, and its dependencies, than, say RPKI.  given that most people on 
this list won’t know your organisation’s focal points for the next 
few years, it would be very difficult for anyone here to guide you 
intelligently.

given that you’re in an educational institute, you’re probably 
surrounded by smart and eager people;  i’d be loathe to spend money on 
software when you could easily take some open source tool, and then 
modify this (make it a project for one of your classes) to suit your 
needs.  i recall one of the sudanesse universities showing us how they 
had done something similar, back when they could not get to sourceforge, 
etc. and download common tools like cacti.

regarding access points, i’d strongly advocate for something with a 
centralised controller, if you’re going to deploy dozens of access 
points;  it will make your life much simpler!   we use the ubiquiti 
equipment for the sdnog meeting (and probably for afnog this year) and 
that’s all controlled via a (free) central software controller.  in 
general this works nicely, and is not priced badly.  other vendors have 
similar features, but rather than looking for a vendor to match your 
price, i’d suggest that you are better of writing out a set of 
criteria that matter to you first, and then finding a vendor to match 
those!  along the way you’ll realise what is important to you, and 
ancillary projects that you’ll have to invest in as well.

i’ll say that again - because it’s important and true for everything 
in your budget.  determine your business need (what problem you want to 
solve) and *THEN* go looking for something to match.  and not the other 
way around.


—n.