In an enterprise network, it is
important that the network staff knows its responsibilities. Is it the
responsibility of the network staff to diagnose problems on the user's
desktop, or is it simply to determine that the user's problem is not
communication related? Does the network staff's responsibility
extend only as far as the horizontal cabling wall plate, or does that
responsibility extend all the way to the NIC? These definitions are very important to
a networking department. They affect the workload of each person, and
the cost of network services for the enterprise. The greater the
responsibility of a network staff, the greater the resource
cost. Imagine a restaurant owned and operated by a single
individual. This one person is responsible for all tasks,
including cooking, serving, washing dishes, and paying the
bills. The human resource cost of the restaurant is relatively
low, but possibilities for growth and expansion are limited until the
owner hires cooks, waiters, busboys, and accountants. Now that
responsibilities are divided, the restaurant can serve more people
more efficiently. The tradeoff, of course, is that resource
costs have risen along with the growth and expansion.
Just as the restaurant example showed,
the job of network support can encompass all aspects of the network or
it can be limited to just certain components. These responsibilities
need to be defined and enforced on a department by department basis.
The key to understanding this relationship is that making the
responsibility area too large may overburden the resources of the
department, but making the area too small may make it difficult to
effectively resolve the problems on the network.
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