One time, a couple of weeks after I started working here, one of the other admins asked me what I thought of all of it. The infrastructure, the network, and so on. It took a couple of seconds for me to put my thoughts together, and I said, “Have you ever been to Rome?”

He had, so I continued, “This network is Rome”.

He was confused, understandably, so I explained.

Some networks are like Phoenix, AZ. They’re relatively new and shiny. They’re brought up for the purpose they serve, and for the time in which they exist. There’s not a building in Phoenix over 125 years old. It was built according to relatively modern methods, and the streets are largely laid out in a grid, because there wasn’t a whole lot to get in their way. The city was started from essentially a clean slate.

Some networks, particularly in non-technological companies, are much more like Ephesus in Turkey. Ephesus is amazing…it’s kind of like a metropolis the size of Orlando just got up and left. Seriously, I was there, and it was mind-boggling. It’s almost exactly like it was 1500 years ago. There has been no modern development there, so when you walk through it, you’re in the midst of miles of ruins.

Rome, on the other hand, is a different sort of beast. Romulus founded the City of Seven Hills 2,500 years old, if you believe the legends, and it has been occupied for pretty much the entire time since. When you climb out of an underground Metro station full of artifacts excavated while digging the subway tunnels you just left, you may find yourself facing an Roman gladiatorial arena turned into a Catholic church. The modern Rome grew up out of the old, and there’s a continual architectural history of the past 2500 years waiting on you to find it.

It’s the exact same way here on this network. The new Windows desktop infrastructure runs smoothly alongside the host database mentioned in the paper above, written 20 years ago. It relies on the host database, actually. Like Rome’s streets, sewer, viaducts, and aquaducts, these antique systems were vital to the time, and if they aren’t still in use, they paved the way for the modern systems that replaced them.

Being someone who likes archaeology, antiquities, and old libraries and junk stores, working here is a pleasure, because there’s always something new to discover, and like I did today, a rich history behind it.