*Make no assumptions* (when people assume, bad things happen)

-do not count on the 8 port switch to be operational when you get down to Centreville. The switch also had no power cord.

*Other Surprises*

-finding a four port switch (of the exact model we had purchased) in the closet.

-not all the stations had mice or power cables as we had expected

*Be Creative*

-using print servers as switches

-using really long LAN cables to network the computers to the switch in the other room

-observing the network configuration in the other room to understand how our network could be made to access the Internet. (The computers in the other lab were all assigned IP addresses, rather than being configured automatically.) We had to assign our own IP addresses for the computers. We used our creativity and observation skills (and prior lecture notes) to deduce the numbers.