As the manager of an IT section, you have got the difficult job of stretching your hardware budget to the maximum effectiveness. As the year draws on and the extra money starts to run out, there is always the need to do an abrupt network rollout that is not in the budget laid out three quarters ago.

The policy and procedure guide may or may not specify where you must buy the equipment from; if it doesn't, you may want to look at buying it from eBay or through a secondary or tertiary merchant who sells refurbished kit. The vast majority of these transactions go off without a hitch; it's the exceptions that can destroy careers.

The upside is buying equipment for your networking centre at 50% to 90% off of list price, and often even more. It is the situations where you are buying stolen property, or counterfeit equipment, or even sending money to someone who doesn't ship the product that causes the problems.

The primary sources of secondary market networking equipment are larger organisations; they have just upgraded to a new standard, or moved a lot of equipment out of a department to replace it with a consistent set of equipment, and they have to get rid of the old stock; this means you can get some fairly modern pieces of networking kit for a very low price. For a small business trying to fill out a launch from a tight budget, that's a real bonus.

However, as the Romans said, "Caveat Emptor" - buyer beware. The gray market for computer equipment (people selling counterfeit goods, or goods purchased quasi-legally) is huge; it is estimated to be nearly 60% of all secondary market sales.

If you bid on an item with a price that seems too good to be true, chances are you are bidding on a box full of disappointment. There are some fairly standard tips and useful advice to help you sort through the muddle, and get the deal that makes your department work better.

First and foremost, check the seller's buyer rating; if you are dealing with a professional refurbishment shop, there are several techniques that you should look for - like a return policy, overnight shipping, and reasonable contact hours. Most now offer good warranty coverage, and telephone technical support; the experienced secondary market seller isn't selling a commodity; they are trying to build a business relationship, because when someone suddenly needs a piece of networking equipment, it is almost always to replace an important part that has worn out.

You may also find that some merchants will even send a technical representative out to install and configure the item for you.

Likewise, for older networking hardware, or legacy equipment, they may be the only people who have tested certified examples ready to sell.

Any equipment that comes through a secondary reseller will have, at the very least, been turned on to make sure it works. Most will have a continuous power-on cycle to make sure there are no hidden issues, and quite a few go through an extensive screening and configuration testing rig to get the hardware back to "factory" conditions, including flashing the BIOS and firmware to the latest standards available for that piece of equipment.