After reading Internet slows down the computer, I was reminded of two times over the years where businesses thought they knew best. It's always interesting to know (or wonder) how people think.

First: We took over IT support at a small regional bank around 2005. Three locations. Upon onboarding assessment, we discovered their HQ location had two data drops at each station. Not too unusual on the surface; one was connected to the PC's onboard NIC while the other was connected to the PC's add-in NIC. OK then, I assumed one NIC went to their main/production network while the other must surely connect to a different network or VLAN, maybe for their bank core processing or something. Until I dug deeper and found out they didn't; all NICs connected to the same set of switches. Alright; surely they have some VLANs in place, separating things out? No, no they don't; it's all VLAN1, everywhere.

I asked and finally talked to someone who was around when they built the building in the 90's. Whichever IT contractor they worked with at the time told them they'd be more secure if they had a separate NIC in each PC for Internet access. They thought they were accomplishing this by plugging a separate NIC into the same switch & VLAN. How or why they assumed this I never found out, but thus began the process of disconnecting all the second, redundant network connections!

Second: It's 2015 now and I was called to perform some upgrades at a small company involved in the farming sector. 10 PCs or so. Went there to assess what needed to be upgraded (as the customer said they have old PCs and need new ones but aren't sure what). I look around and ask basic questions, like what line of business apps do they have, what they have for Internet service, etc., and as I ask the Internet question my contact shows me "Oh, we plug this in when we need to get online" - and he grabs a second Ethernet cable at his desk connected to a (currently disconnected) USB NIC. That network cable was plugged into their standalone cable modem in the basement (you know the one, with 4 LAN ports).

I asked, "Does everyone have one of these?" "Not everyone, just the three of us," I was told. As it turns out, this small, family-owned company was run by a very sweet (but very old) lady, who was so scared of Internet access she insisted people plug in when they need to get online, do their thing, then unplug it. And forget about Wi-Fi! After some gentle discussion with her, I was able to convince them to include a proper firewall in the scope of their upgrades and thus eliminated the need for them to have to plug in manually every time they wanted to get online.