I think having a design section would be a good idea, although I can understand the concern about getting a lot of fluff.

I find this idea particularly attractive because I am the only network engineer at my job and I often wish I had someone to "spit-ball" ideas with. I've posted design type questions in the past (to what I considered the relevant forums) and I can't express how much help they've been to me.

Besides, I know I'm not the only person who doesn't want to be referred to as "the idiot who designed this..." by the next guy who comes to the job. Any feedback is always appreciated.

--Brandon

Marwan

I agree with all, this is a really good idea. Often people come to these forums with a technical problem and often the real solution is to tell them to redesign their network which

a) they often don't want to hear

b) is often not very practical for them

As Brandon quite rightly says it is very useful to bounce ideas off other people, i know from my personal experience that the best designs usually come out of a collabaritive approach.

My only concern is how this would be implemented practically without fragementing the existing groups too much.

Perhaps within each major topic ie. Network Infrastructure, Unified Communications & Video, Wireless Mobility etc.. we could have an additional forum for design.

My worry if we setup a whole new design forum is that we will end up with a lot of questions then in the wrong place.

And i agree with Scott in that we need to be careful that these forums don't just become a "please design my network for me...".

But design is so important it really should be highlighted and it is very interesting after all !!

Jon