Fig. 1 — Recursive hub-and-spoke. Core hub with six site arms; each arm a site, each site a smaller hub with its own sub-spokes. Same pattern at every scale; no two specimens identical.
Findings: Internet circuit counts of 1, 2, and 3 across sister sites, selected by budget mood, vendor relationship, and lunar phase. No rhyme. No reason. No map exists. At two sites the backup circuit is faster than the primary. Never investigated.
Entropy budget: HIGH · Maturity level: L2 (Inherited) · Thumbprints: none found
Findings: Three routing protocols in one administrative estate. EIGRP at HQ, because history. OSPF at the branches, because a consultant. RIP at one site, because a vendor configured it in 1998 and “it just works.” Mutual redistribution where they meet, untagged, unfiltered, on a router also running NAT. The route-map author left for personal reasons in 2009. The routes remain. Every router carries the full Internet table: for “router intelligence.”
Entropy budget: SEVERE · Maturity level: L3 (Intentional) · Thumbprints: 2 suspected
Findings: Mixed platforms, one estate. Cisco ASA at HQ (procured 2005), Palo Alto at the branches (procured 2017). Each keeps its own object database in its own dialect: the same production web server is “PROD-WEB01” at one site, “Web01-PROD” at the next, and “webserv-3” at the third. Quarterly rule-base exports to spreadsheets that dispute one another and are all correct.
Entropy budget: HIGH · Maturity level: L3 · Thumbprints: 1 (login banner, motivational)
Findings: During an audit, every switch in one building reported a native VLAN that did not match any design document. It matched a certification number belonging to an engineer separated four years earlier. Under Axiom V, the network remembered him. The badge did not. Rollback was deferred — per the current architect — for “reasons of historical significance.”
Entropy budget: LOW · Maturity level: L4 (Canonical) · Thumbprints: 1 confirmed, permanent