WHY STANDARDS AND CONSISTENT DESIGN MATTER MORE THAN YOU THINK
Why Standards and Consistent Design Matter More Than You Think
Almost every company that reaches out to us does so because something in their network is not working the way it should. After many projects, one pattern became obvious. The root cause is rarely a complex technology. The root cause is usually the absence of standards.
Many networks grow in stages and are managed by different engineers over the years. Everyone brings their own vision, their own habits and their own shortcuts. At the same time the famous rule “if it works, do not touch it” becomes the ticket to long term technical debt. Eventually the result is the same everywhere.
Common issues we keep discovering:
• Many interfaces have no descriptions. Nobody knows what is connected where because the engineer who deployed the service is no longer in the company.
• Subnets are allocated randomly. There is no structured IP addressing plan and no logic behind prefixes or subnet boundaries.
• VLANs appear everywhere with no strategy. They are created on the fly with no clear purpose or alignment to the overall design.
• Parts of the network run only BGP. Other parts run only OSPF. Another segment uses OSPF only for loopback reachability while BGP runs between loopbacks. This creates an inconsistent control plane that becomes very hard to troubleshoot.
• Routers are chained in a way in which each device acts as a Route Reflector for the next one. This breaks the basic principles of a healthy iBGP core and complicates convergence.
• Different transport technologies coexist with no plan. One place uses VPLS, another area uses VXLAN and somewhere else LDP is mixed with RSVP. RSVP behaves like LDP because there is no CSPF or path control in place.
When a failure happens in such an environment, nobody knows how the network is supposed to behave. Troubleshooting becomes slow, confusing and sometimes painful. Hours or even days are wasted trying to understand what the original design was meant to achieve.
This is why standards matter. Rebuilding or redesigning a network that still “works” may seem unnecessary, but it is the only way to bring consistency, clarity and long term stability. A network without a clear design and a single source of truth cannot evolve. At some point it will collapse under its own improvisations.
At ITcare we help companies rebuild that foundation. A consistent architecture is not just a best practice. It is the only way to ensure that your network remains reliable, scalable and understandable for the years ahead.
