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: 14 October 2024 —

• How do you get experience in IT?  [Lost In Transit]

• Russia scanning for unpatched vulnerabilities.  [The Register]

• Meet the team paid to break into top-secret bases.  [BBC News]

• Discord block in Russia and Turkey.  [Restore Privacy]

• Two new tools from same group can infect air-gapped devices.  [Ars Technica]

• The size of packets.  [Geoff Huston]

• EVPN design - eBGP everywhere.  [ipSpace]

• China hacked Verizon, AT&T, wiretap systems.  [Ars Technica]  [Schneier]  [WSJ]

• Cops love facial recognition and resisting court orders.  [The Register]

• Egress peer engineering - building blocks.  [RoutingCraft]

• Largest recorded DDoS is 3.8Tbps.  [Schneier]  [Cloudflare]

• Pluggable optics in need of a makeover.  [GazettaByte]

• RPKI, the fix for BGP's weaknesses, has big issues.  [The Register]

• Evil Corp's ties with Russia and NATO member attacks.  [The Register]  [BBC News]  [Tripwire]

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.