Conclusion
As computing becomes a mature industry, it acquires its own baggage, and legacy technology is one element of this! Rather than balking at the idea of managing aging networks, it's not so difficult to fashion tools that can help to come to grips with some difficult problems—such as link congestion, performance, and so on. It all comes down to applying your fine mind and stripping back the layers of complexity!
As you've seen, legacy technology can itself be leveraged to generate some useful results simply by scripting existing programs. It's useful to view this as a snapshot of history, given the recent developments in techniques such as AOP.
Remember, every item of technology instantly becomes legacy infrastructure. So, rather than rejecting the old stuff, embrace it, re-use it, and learn from it.