Large file transfers exposed the shared bottleneck
The county had two data centers, 11 facilities and 35 departments. Public works used large CAD and mapping files, and heavy transfers on the shared ring affected other sites. Planning began in 2021; supply delays pushed implementation into the second half of 2022.
The network’s age was only part of the problem. The topology connected departments through shared capacity in a way that made one agency’s workload visible to others as degraded service. A like-for-like equipment replacement could have increased capacity while preserving that relationship. The redesign addressed how the sites connected as well as the hardware carrying their traffic.
Routed links changed the relationship between sites
Dark fiber connected the buildings to Catalyst 9606R aggregation switches. Layer 3 links and redundant dynamic routing replaced the Layer 2 ring and static-route arrangement. The upgraded infrastructure supported up to 100 Gbps at the data-center/core level, 25 Gbps at many offices and 1 Gbps at remote locations.
These figures describe different parts of the network. They are not a promise that every employee receives a 100 Gbps connection. The architectural significance is the separation of site paths and the ability to use routing to respond to their availability. More capacity helped, but the change in topology explains why the program was a redesign rather than simply a faster set of switches.
Storage work addressed another part of the file-service chain
The county also migrated from spinning-disk arrays to Pure Storage flash with Veeam protection. Backups that had occupied a weekend were reported to finish in hours. Staff described more responsive files and financial systems.
That outcome cannot be attributed to the network alone. File access depends on the server and storage response as well as the transport path. The completed program improved both. Its evidence is therefore strongest as an infrastructure result: the county reduced constraints at multiple points in the service chain instead of assuming one upgrade would account for the entire user experience.
The refresh left a more manageable operating environment
The county’s limited IT staff reported confidence in maintaining the upgraded environment. The account gives specific link capabilities and a broad backup-duration improvement, but no controlled application benchmark or quantified staffing reduction.
Cartennas’s assessment is that the project connected three decisions: replacing a shared topology, increasing capacity where departments needed it, and improving the storage behind their files. The useful result was a more responsive service with clearer intersite resilience. The case shows why the original business symptom has to be followed through the complete path, even when the first visible problem looks like a slow network.