Resume

Michael C. Toren <mct@toren.net>
Blue Bell, Pennsylvania 19422
Additional contact information available upon request

Objective:

I am seeking a challenging technical position in a pleasant working environment, which will permit me to continue practicing and expanding my skill set and knowledge base. I am equally comfortable and qualified for either a Network Engineering, Unix System Administration, or Programming position.

As a result of my developed analytical problem solving skills and ability to learn new tasks and concept abstractions quickly, I am also more than willing to accept a position in an exciting new field that I have not yet had the opportunity to work in.

Professional Experience:


Apr 2002 - Present Sr. Core Network Engineer FastNet

In April of 2002, FastNet purchased Netaxs, my previous employer. As a member of the newly formed Core Network Engineering group, I:

  • Transitioned the FastNet network and the networks of five acquisitions, which had been spread out across AS1785, AS4231, AS4969, AS5041, AS6434, and AS7783, into a single autonomous system, AS1785, with a single IGP.

  • Designed and implemented new FastNet POPs, consolidating existing POPs in locations where multiple acquisitions each previously had a presence. Redundant uplink and power sources were provisioned when possible, and plans established for possible failure scenarios.

  • Generated profit and loss reports for individual POPs, and recommended either their continued existence or closure based on their findings.

  • Performed extensive traffic engineering to best utilize upstream transit providers and peering relationships, resulting in significant fiscal savings.

  • Developed and maintained a number of tools to assist the Network Engineering group in their tasks, including project management tracking, tracking IP, VLAN, and BGP community allocations, visualizing switch-fabric topology, and visualizing BGP route-reflector topology.

  • Maintained the Network Engineering group's applications responsible for gathering traffic statistic information, utilizing primarily MRTG and RRDtool. Additionally, wrote software to allow generation of aggregate graphs, providing insight into traffic consumption for each POP, and providing an overview of the company's overall upstream transit capacity.


Dec 2001 - Apr 2002 Network Engineering Team Leader Netaxs

  • Supervised two Network Engineers making up the Network Engineering Group, which was responsible for maintaining the Netaxs network, turning up new customers, and planning for future growth, in addition to the Sr. Network Engineer responsibilities of my previous position.

  • Delegated ownership of long-term projects, reviewing work, and tracking progress.

  • Coordinated scheduled time off, to assure the department was appropriately staffed at all times, and scheduled on-call hours for handling escalations from the Network Operations Center.

  • Generated monthly progress reports to the Director of Research and Development and Engineering.

  • Provided Sales Engineering during sales presentations for high-revenue customers.


Jan 2001 - Dec 2001 Sr. Network Engineer Netaxs

  • Responsible for all duties and tasks of my previously-held Network Administrator position.

  • Worked closely with the Director of Network Engineering and the Director of Provisioning to implement a maintenance window and develop configuration review procedures, resulting in a substantial improvement of the network's uptime.

  • Developed software to generate reports of all router configuration changes made across the network on a daily basis, and procedures to reconcile those changes with proposed configurations which had been approved to be implemented during the maintenance window.

  • Deployed a large-scale HSRP solution to improve the uptime of colocation customers, in the event a core router became unreachable.

  • Turned up dark fiber leased from MFN utilizing Cisco ONS 15454 DWDM equipment, interconnecting POPs in New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. at OC48 speeds, and providing Netaxs with the ability to sell OC3, OC12, and GigabitEthernet point-to-point circuits along the same path.

  • Oversaw the development of the Netaxs ticketing system, used company-wide to track customer and inter-departmental requests, as well as long-term projects.

  • Developed software responsible for invoicing customers with unusual, contractually obligated methods of billing.


Jun 1998 - Jan 2001 Network and System Administrator Netaxs

  • Responsible for turning up new Netaxs BGP peering and customer sessions, as well as debugging BGP routing problems.

  • Sought out new peering relationships, at both public exchange points as well as via private interconnects.

  • Turned up new customer point-to-point, frame-relay, SMDS, and ATM circuits as required. Opened trouble tickets, and interfaced with telecommunications providers to resolve issues on both new and existing circuits.

  • Responsible for administering several Unix servers, both Linux / x86 as well as SunOS / SPARC systems key to the smooth operation of the company. Services maintained include mail (sendmail), web (apache), DNS (bind), authentication (RADIUS, TACACS+), FTP, TFTP, and system monitoring software.


Oct 1997 - Jun 1998 Network Operations Center Netaxs

  • Served as the initial point of contact for dedicated leased line and colocation customers reporting trouble.

  • Responsible for monitoring the Netaxs mid-Atlantic IP network, responding to outages, and working closely with other Network Operations Centers and telecommunications providers to debug and diagnose network and circuit problems.

  • Additionally, I assisted the System Administrators in their task of maintaining the company's Unix servers and workstations.


Related Activities:

I am an active member of the Philadelphia Area Linux Users Group, providing services utilized by it's web pages and high-volume mailing list, and of the Philadelphia Perl Mongers.

I continue to monitor many Unix and Networking related mailing lists, such as NANOG, inet-access, specific IETF working groups, and others.

Aside from my full time employment positions, I've also done a large number of part-time consulting work after hours. Significant tasks and accomplishments while working as a consultant include the migration of two moderately sized ISP's from one upstream provider to another, one of which involved a massive renumbering project, mail and web server design and implementation for a moderately sized DSL provider offering POP3 accounts and virtual domain hosting, system administration and router management for a public library in Illinois, mail and web server design and implementation for three separate website and graphic design groups, and the design and implementation of a WiFi internet-cafe in the Philadelphia area.

During my personal time, I have developed and contributed to a number of Open Source software projects. I am the principal author and developer of tcptraceroute, a traceroute implementation using TCP packets, and countertrace, a Linux iptables traceroute spoofing toy. More information on both can be found on the software section of my website, at <http://michael.toren.net/code/>.

Personal Interests:

Kayaking,  Open Source software development,  Lego Mindstorms,  exploring new technologies. 


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Last Updated: Tuesday, 25-Nov-2003 19:33:28 PST.   Valid HTML 4.01
© 2000 - 2008 Michael C. Toren <mct@toren.net>
Schrodinger's cat is not dead.