Brief Summary

I have over 30 years’ experience in the IT industry, most of which has been spent in networking/telecoms in the UK/EMEA and NZ/APAC.  I have worked in varied roles such as technical consulting, network design and architecture, pre-sales support, operational support and software engineering.  I moved to New Zealand in 2008, where I worked in several roles before returning to the UK in 2022.

My experience has been gained in a wide range of organisations, from start-ups, through enterprises and to large service providers and telcos.  I have worked in both team environments and on an individual and independent basis.  In recent years, I have also done a lot of my work in the public sector.

Though performing hands-on work is not as regular as it used to be, it has been a strong element in my previous work, when I gained satisfaction from performing proof-of-concepts before deploying to production environments.  I first started working with Cisco in 1994, and with Juniper in 1999.

I very much enjoy customer-facing roles since no two customers are alike, and so the variety this gives is always a challenge that I am keen to take on.  Taking part in technical discussions with customers forms a key part of being able to fully understand their requirements, which is essential to being able to deliver a successful solution.

Latest News and Useful Articles                — Updated: 11 September 2024 —

• Rogue WHOIS server gives researcher superpowers.  [Ars Technica]

• PMTUD in MPLS networks.  [Lost In Transit]

• Looking for 240/4 addresses.  [Geoff Huston]

• Australia threatens to force encryption backdoors.  [Schneier]  [UpGuard]

• Network connectivity and graph theory.  [ipSpace]

• Ciena sends a 1.6Tbps optical lambda over 470km link.  [GazettaByte]

• EVPN design - scaling iBGP with RRs.  [ipSpace]

• MSS, MSS clamping, PMTUD, and MTU.  [Lost In Transit]

• YubiKey side-channel attack.  [Schneier]  [The Verge]  [Engadget]  [Ars Technica]

• List of old NSA training videos.  [Schneier]  [NSA PDF]  [The Verge]  [Engadget]

• Why are L2 VPNs so popular?  [ipSpace]

• Poor man's traffic engineering.  [Routing Craft]

• Free and open-source IPv6 textbook.  [ipSpace]  [IPv6 Textbook, PDF]

• Open-source network automation labs.  [ipSpace]

A more comprehensive news/article list can be found on my networks sub-domain here.

Click here for the latest full version of my CV, or find me on LinkedIn and X (Twitter).

rob (at) larsenconsulting (dot) net

© Robert Larsen.  All rights reserved.