“Paul Messias knows a thing or two about stretching a buck, and
using open source software is one of his main techniques. As
network engineer for the Needham Public Schools in Massachusetts,
he is constantly looking to get more for less, given that his
budget is lean at $32,000 a year (notwithstanding the roughly
$300,000 earmarked for network gear for the town’s high school,
which is being renovated starting this summer).“Messias oversees a mostly HP (via CXtec) and Apple Computer
network that supports a few thousand students and staff across an
inter-building fiber network and 100Mbps Ethernet network within
buildings (the high school is getting 1Gbps to the desktop)…”