I was running a consulting company in my garage in the early 90's. A few years later I was hosting public web-servers from the same site.

You needed a public IP-address to run a public server, and I had aquired a C-network from the Swedish domain registry at that time, KTH.

As I was running both public and non-public servers, I divided the network in subnets according to the RFC. I.e. a network with netmask 255.255.255.192.

Fast foward to last week. Modern times but still running IPv4 with same network setup, with subnet masks. Now film production instead of consulting.

Why you may wonder? It works is the simple answer. If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

However, I got new equipment that couldn't connect to a wi-fi network with non-default mask.

Long overdue, I decided to change the logical network topology to several non-public C-networks, including all static adresses for servers.

The router was bought in Stockholm 15 years ago. A professional device, rackmount, with two wan ports, four LAN ports including DMZ. I haven't touched more than once, and then when we moved to Skåne. With a +30 year old network topology.

Do you know all passwords to all network devices? I found out that I didn't.

Hardware reset made a miracle, but the admin webserver didn't work with modern browsers due to certificates. Found a retitered MacBook and could log in.

After a quick basic setup, I could reconnect my mesh wi-fi and the new piece of equipment worked. Horray.

Then I continued to set up the router properly and installed the latest parches, from 2013. Reboot, and the router was bricked. I've passed the point of no return. End-of-life since long ago.

Bought a new router and installed it properly, one class C-network, mesh wi-fi for normal operation, guest network and IoT network. Everything critical up same day, non-critical next day.

When restarting the serves, one raid disk stopped working. The disks have been running for ten years, 24h and 365 days per year. Both hardware and RAID software was end-of-life and no support avaliable.

Positive with this new setup is a backup wan-link with a 5G router and an extra switch to separe different types traffic.

I also created an asset inventory with equipment and adressing as a shared list in Sharepoint. Included lifecycle management and financial assessment management.

Password for router included in normal routines.

Backup routines worked as the should, so no data lost.

Why did this happen? The simple answer that IT, especially infrastructure is not treated as core business, and as long it works nobody notices.

IT in film production equipment and core applications for film production is another story with regular updates and planned changes.

The worst part? The situation for many larger organizations are not better.

IT doesn't matter, until it does.

Disruptive architecture