IT and network engineering for Pascha Cologne

Taking this over began with a problem that occurs in long-established businesses more often than you would think: the network was there, it was running, but it was not documented — and the previous IT people could no longer be reached. The first step was therefore not an expansion but a complete inventory. What is connected where, what talks to what, which rule blocks which route.

What came to light is only logical for a business of this size: seven separate networks, around ten switches, around twenty access points and more than a hundred devices. The separation is not an end in itself. A point-of-sale system has no business being anywhere near a guest Wi-Fi, cameras do not belong in the hotel network, and access to administration must be walled off from everything else. These are precisely the separations that are the first to soften in everyday use when nobody is watching.

Since then I have been looking after the infrastructure continuously: firewall rules, network administration, access points, server operations with a protection package. Plus the documentation that was missing before.

There is no pretty picture for this kind of project. What you see here is therefore a diagram showing the structure — addresses, device identifiers and access credentials are deliberately left out. This is a live client network, and that belongs on no website.