umm, if it makes you feel any better, the network I admin'd for last year had 300+ boxes for a T1 at a school. Alright, could be better, but not so bad. What was bad was that there was not a single switch on the network. All hubs.The hubs crashed ALL the time b/c of the ridiculous amount of repeat traffic. Tried to convince the powers that be that infrastructure could be easily imprvoed with the purchase of like $3000 worth of switches, they'd hear none of it. Apparently having half the building's net access go out once a day wasn't too big of a deal. but OMG sniffing the network was a PITA, all the freaking filters that had to be applied to narrow down to the traffic you actually wanted to listen to. argh