10 GbE support on motherboards is not what's needed to increase adoption. Decent prices on 10GbE switches is what's needed. For small companies, 10 GbE is just not practical. You can't get any kind of decent port density without a chassis based switch and they're priced out of our reach. Even if I just wanted 12-24 10 GbE ports, there's not really a cost effective way to get that. Sure, I could look at a Nexus 3000 series at a cost of $30k + SFPs, but then I've got probably $40-45k in a single switch when it's all said and done. Talk to me when I can get that for $10-15k and I might buy one.

Create an adapter that physically transforms RJ-45 to some obscure connector format, then epoxy that into the ethernet ports on the devices. Then you keep the adapter. Anytime someone wants to connect the device to the network, they have to come track down the adapter from you.

Realistically, just produce documentation showing you warned IT that this would create a shitstorm and take it to the big boss to show how IT dropped the ball. The problem should solve itself at that point.

Until you told us you weren't in engineering. My advice, let them deal with it instead of trying to force a solution on them.

Get a job at another company that uses that stuff. You can do helpdesk or junior network admin with the experience you have now. Offer to help out the database team with basic tasks, if their workload is anything like our team's is, they will not turn you down. After you build up some experience there is often room for career advancement.

I could probably almost double my salary if I moved to an app development or dba role, but the headaches those guys have to put up with just makes it not worth it to me. At least at our company. Engineering just seems to be a lot more by the book.

I won't claim to be intimately aware of telco operations, but it's my understanding that more and more telcos are ditching channelized copper on the backbone and migrating toward IP based solutions over fiber because they're easier to work with. If copper will still be here in 15 or 20 years I don't see it in the backbone, I see it as the last mile.

You seem to be focused on BRI ISDN which is what is used by those you referenced (TV remotes, voice actors, etc). It is an extremely low bandwidth connection (128 Kbps) but "it works" and is probably not going away anytime soon. PRI is probably much more prevalent. PRI is what I would consider the T1 of ISDN. It is commonly used for enterprise PBX systems, and I definitely don't see it going away anytime soon. The only other realistic option I see at present is SIP, but even then unless it's delivered over fiber SIP services are still probably going to come in over some kind of copper medium (be it T1, etc). Some companies are moving to fiber, but there is usually considerably more cost associated with bringing fiber to the premises as compared to copper which likely is already on premise.

My company has fiber on premise for IP, but we still have PRIs from the LEC for our voice service. Any time you bring voice in over an IP transport (as in SIP), you have to make sure the IP network has proper QoS, etc whereas PRI "just works". PRI is usually more expensive, but not overly so. When we replaced our PBX a few years ago we considered SIP, but when we presented the various options to the powers that be, they chose to stick with PRI because it has a proven track record whereas SIP was just gaining traction in the market.

I think in 15 years you will definitely see fiber steal a large market share of those customers that are currently using copper, but I think there will still be plenty of copper around.

Ok, maybe I'm missing the point, but isn't it a lot easier to build stuff to survive a hurricane or tornado if it's underground? That would be my assumption based on the notion of a storm cellar or other type of "bunker" being constructed underground. So, why not just build datacenters 10-20 feet underground? Essentially you would treat it like a basement, but without a building on top of it. I could see flooding as being an issue, but couldn't you just excavate another 30-40 feet below the floor of the datacenter and give water somewhere to go? The water would have to fill up that space before it became a concern to you, and I would assume that if you designed it in such a way that you never expect water to get down there in the first place then if you put pumps to deal with any water that does come in it shouldn't be too hard for them to keep up with any water that does.

What about using a terminal server for RS232 stuff? There are plenty of them out there that are designed to give you a console connection to network gear. Seems like you might be able to hack something like this to make it work. Essentially you would load a driver on a PC that makes it think the serial port on the terminal server is a local RS232 port.

Even old computers will still run plenty of good games...Quake, Warcraft, Halflife, Unreal Tournament, etc.

Quake and Quake 2 in particular made it easy to create your own mods. Why not spend time hacking on the games and the rest playing the games? Great way to keep it interesting and fun.

If your webserver firewall allows outbound connections to anything you can't easily provide an explanation for then you need to be sent to a remedial network security course. All our devs hate me because everytime they deploy something to production it inevitably breaks because they didn't submit a request to have the necessary ports opened in the firewall, but I'd rather deal with devs hating me than me hating devs because their insecure apps got us hacked.

That, to me, defeats the entire point. Why even give the machines network adapters if there's nothing for them to talk to? It'd be much better in terms of experience, learning, practicality and fun if you just setup an isolated network for all of the student machines and create your own little Internet. That gives them the ability to setup client/server apps with other students and deal with security issues, just like they'd have to do in real life.

Setting everyone up by themself might let them do some basic lessons, but why teach them something they'll probably never experience in the real world?

WIPO != Government

That used to be the norm and they still do it. When my grandmother passed, we had to go through the process of shutting down all her utility accounts and discovered that she had rented a phone from them back in the 70s and was still doing so. Granted, this was back maybe 6-7 years ago, but I have no reason to believe they've stopped renting phones since then.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I think this is precisely why contracts exist...so people can't commit to something, not deliver and expect to still get paid. If they refuse to fix bugs, have someone else do it, then take the dev to court and get damages in the amount of your costs of having someone else fix their bugs.