Friends of OldCommGuy (by Tim O’Neill)

Editor Profile - Tim O’Neill is an independent technology consultant. He has over 30 years experience working in the WAN, Analog, ISDN, ATM and LAN test market. Tim has worked with companies like Navtel, Network General, Ganymede and ClearSight Networks and is now helping companies get lab recognition and technology verification. Tim is also the Chief Contributing Editor for LoveMyTool.com, a website designed to help network managers gain access to valuable information and real solution stories from other customers. Tim is a patent holding, published and degreed engineer, who has seen this technology grow from Teletype (current loop) data analysis to today’s 10 Gigabit LAN’s focused on business applications with heavy compliance demands. Tim can be reached at oldcommguy (at) bellsouth (dot) net.

A Brief History

Only the last 20 years or so since I started my career in communications have been working in the LAN world. In the old old days communications meant telephone and there was one telephone company AT&T and if you were in communications you worked with AT&T in some way.

I started at the age of 14 cleaning and oiling communication relay’s and their electrical contacts in the local Central Office. The blue from the cleaner and oil will probably never come off me but it was fun and good money. I was paid $10.00 per rack. Each rack took about 2 to 3 hours but remember the minimum wage was about a $.50 per hour, so this was very good money for a 14 year old.

I graduated from high school at 17 and landed a position at Shell Research and Development as an electronic technician and that, as they say started me on my path into the communications world. I had been an Amateur Radio operator since I was 13 and the folks at Shell felt I could be useful.

I loved the people, there was at least 1 Ph.D. for every 3 mortals there and I still remember many of them today as they were my tutors and I was allowed to do things that I could only have dreamed about, from working with lasers for transmission of data, building memory cells, experimenting with almost anything I could think of. And over the next few years I was fortunate enough to file many patent applications and some even still exist and are relevant today. Working with all these smart people taught me a very important lesson.

3 F’s – Friends, Family and Faith

The one thing I learned early on and I still remember today is that no one knows everything, about anything. So over the years I have accumulated many very smart friends that always review what I write and help me in everything I do. I call them “My Friends” and that is exactly what they are.

We have worked together in companies, in volunteer groups, on trade shows, on technical documents (some of which became industry standards) and much more. I believe that these friends are so important to the industry that I am going to introduce several of them to you and more as time goes by.

I also learned the 3 F’s – Friends, Family and Faith and below are my personal Friends as well as technical Friends. Enjoy meeting these wonderful people and I hope you make many friends in your career. These are in alphabetical order, I hope!

Editor's Note - By the way, many of the “Friends-of-OldCommGuy” are essentially volunteered editors for LoveMyTool since almost all of Tim's technical posts are first reviewed by them before publication.

Betty DuBois

Betty is one in a million; she really is a tested expert and a super friend and really nice person. We have worked together in several companies and outside projects and she is a true professional. Betty DuBois is president of DuBois Training & Consulting, LLC. With over 10 years of experience in protocol analysis both as a Consultant and an Instructor, Betty has performed fault isolations, application profiles, and network baselines for a wide variety of clients.

As an Instructor for WireShark & Sniffer Universities, she is known for her ability to make a dry, complex subject fun and interesting by using both humor and real-world examples. She has presented at NetWorld + Interop and is an experienced courseware developer and marketing collateral writer. She holds a BBA with Distinction from the University of Michigan-Flint, and her industry certifications include Sniffer Certified Expert, Certified Novell Instructor, Novell’s CNE, and Certified Network Expert. She can be reached at Betty (at) Bettyland (dot) com. No one can ever say enough about Betty but that “It’s always better in Bettyland”!

Tony Fortunato

When Tony isn’t teaching or writing for his web site he is busy working on his summer home. Tony is a Senior Network Specialist for The Technology Firm with experience in protocol analysis, design, implementation, and troubleshooting of LAN/WAN/Wireless networks, desktops and servers since 1989.

Tony's background in trading floor and financial networks includes design and implementation where Tony worked with multivendor equipment (Cisco, Nortel, Microsoft, Fluke Networks, Network General, MRTG, Wireshark and many other Open Source products). Tony is familiar with a variety of network devices such as switches, routers and tools such as protocol analyzers (sniffers), network discovery and network management tools.

Recently Tony has architected, installed and support various types of wireless high speed residential as well as hundreds of hotspots. Tony has worked on networks ranging in size from 2 to 120,000 nodes. Tony has taught at high schools, Colleges/Universities, Networld + Interop and many onsite private classroom settings to thousands of analysts. Tony works at customer sites within a range of capacities from project management, network design, consulting, troubleshooting, designing customized courses and assisting with installing physical equipment.

Jay Ferron

I have known Jay for many years and he without a doubt has more certifications than anyone else I know. Just read this – Jayson Ferron - ADSP, CEH, CISM, CISSP, CWSP, MCITP, MCDBA, MCT, NSA – IAM, RWMT and I am not really sure what all these stand for but I can guarantee that he knows what he is talking about.

On an average Jay is traveling about 40+ weeks a year training and consulting. Jay is CIO, for Interactive Security Training LLC, working on various projects that include training, Windows and Unix security designs, Network infrastructures, enterprise designs and installations and has a very impressive list of clients.

Jay has been a presenter at APCUG, Comdex, Tech Forum Managers meetings, Future Forum 2000, ISPCON, Corporate Advisory Board, CTEXPO, Web Developer conference, and many computer user groups. Jay travels around the world teaching and training users of computer technologies.

Jay has authored many original work:
- Migrating NetWare to Microsoft Windows 2003 (Microsoft)
- Converting GroupWise to Microsoft Exchange (Microsoft)
- Security Challenges and Solutions Workshop Series for Microsoft Partners (Microsoft)
- Security Business Decision Sales Maker (Microsoft)
- Security Class Business Decision Maker (Microsoft)
- Right Management for Microsoft Partners (Microsoft)
- Windows Mobile Security Training (Microsoft)
- Enterprise Search Training (Microsoft)
- Compute Cluster Server Course and LLIFT Sessions
- Smart Computing Magazine (assorted articles on Microsoft Technologies)
and co-authored:
- HIPAA Manual -2002 HIPA Associates, Inc
- Active Defense Advanced Tools Course

Jay is currently a president of Association of Personal Computer User Groups (APCUG) APCUG, board member of the CT– Information Systems Audit and Control Association, Leadership Volunteer for American Red Cross Nation Headquarters – disaster services. Jay absolutely believes that we have to give some of our time and volunteer to help others. Jay can be reached at - jferron (at) interactivesecuritytraining (dot) com.

Scott Haugdahl

I recently wrote an article on Scott and his cool new site Bitcricket.com.

J. Scott Haugdahl has been involved with the networking industry for 25 years. He spent several years in a consulting role during the overhaul of the FAA airspace control system. From there he partnered with Pine Mountain Group where he split his time between troubleshooting critical network problems at Fortune 1000 companies and training others on the troubleshooting techniques he learned in the field. His first company, Net3 Group, was dedicated to developing analysis utilities including a post-capture expert system (NetSense) for users of any brand of protocol analyzer. Mr. Haugdahl continued to teach users the fine art of network analysis and also wrote his popular book entitled Network Analysis and Troubleshooting, published by Addison Wesley.

Recently Scott was CTO of WildPackets where he started out developing and integrating the Net3 Group expert system into the real-time EtherPeek and AiroPeek protocol analyzers and eventually the OmniPeek analysis platform. Scott has spoken at many industry events and written many articles. Scott really believes in the 3 F’s and is a real Family man.

Hartmut Marschall

Hartmut is no stranger to data and telecommunication industry with over 22 years of experience. He spent the first 4 years of his career as a development engineer with Siemens in Germany before moving on into sales and marketing. In 2007, after holding several successful positions in companies like Acterna now JDSU, Radcom, ClearSight Networks, and others Hartmut decided to start his own company ADH Communications.

Hartmut's main goal is to help Fiber-to-the-home municipalities, carriers, and enterprise customers to get the right product, at a fair price, and the support and service they expect from a company that considers itself a partner to their customers. He offers a wide range of products and services from physical layer infrastructure to sophisticated telco-class network traffic and service management infrastructure equipment.

To contact Hartmut, please visit his website.

Mike Pennacchi

Mike is a long time friend and trusted network expert. I have worked with Mike in many situations, with several companies and he has proven himself over and over again as a true professional with a great sense of humor.

Mike Pennacchi is the owner and lead network analyst for Network Protocol Specialists, LLC. He has over 12 years experience as a full time troubleshooting consultant and trainer. Mike spent 9 years with PACCAR working as an application developer, LAN administrator, and Network Technology Manager. The next 6 years was spent at Pine Mountain Group, Inc. as a senior network analyst and trainer.

During this time he traveled around the United States troubleshooting critical network problems. At two Interop’s, Mike has been the team leader of the networking professionals responsible for maintaining the event Interopnet.Mike has spoken at many shows and technical events and helped many companies find their network issues. Mike is also a seasoned trainer that has presented inside companies in Japan and the U.S.

Leonardo (Leo) Rodriguez

Leo is a new friend but a very well respected member of the Friends group.

Having started his career as a hardware and network engineer on the first truly digital, UNIX based, trading system on Wall Street (Market Vision’s Athena System), in the mid 1980’s, Mr. Rodriguez has spent his career focusing on the application of enabling technologies into real world mission critical business solutions.

Leo was the head of Solomon Brothers’ Internetworking Services Group in the late 1980’s responsible for the deployment and expansion of the first digital trading floors in New York, London and Tokyo integrating traditional protocols such as SNA, DECnet, and X.25 with relatively new (at the time) Novell, AppleTalk, Banyan Vines and TCP/IP based financial systems. This progressed into the development of a then new approach to networking data streams via IP-Flooding (Cisco’s original approach to IP-Multicast) and the deployment of the Technekron Software Systems’ TIB protocols (later to be known as TIBCO).

In the early 90’s he focused his attention on high speed infrastructures deploying fiber based networks throughout Manhattan via the use of privately leased tunnel space from Empire City Subway Systems and Fujitsu, AT&T and FiberMux based networks including the first SONET ring in NYC (later to be sold in a lease-back deal to NYNEX) after joining Citicorp.

After designing and deploying next-generation trading floors for Citicorp’s Global Capital Markets Group through the mid-nineties, he then went on to create and lead the Global Data Engineering group responsible for the deployment and integration of the world’s largest private financial network, the Citicorp Global Router Network (GRN). This led to his leadership role in the integration of the Citicorp network with the seven separate networks that made up the Travelers Group Smith Barney-Solomon infrastructure during the Citigroup merger.

This project took the 91 country GRN (90,000 internal and 4 million external users) into new heights by merging it with a 200 city conglomeration of networks that interconnected Travelers Group, Travelers Insurance, Gulf Insurance, Travelers Investment Services, Primerica, and Solomon-Smith Barney. After this monumental success, Mr. Rodriguez turned his attention towards the Internet and joined StarMedia Networks, the first Spanish and Portuguese language global Internet Services provider and proceeded to lead a team of innovative engineers and technologists in the deployment and/or expansion of native-language Internet services throughout South America and southern Europe, including the first large-scale deployment of Internet via-cellular networks deployment in the world (1999).

After the burst of the Internet bubble in 2001, he moved onto strategic consulting positions on the deployment and auditing of highly resilient networks and management systems for the Pentagon and Department of Defense contractors such as Harris Corporation and Thermo Electron, as well multinational financial institutions such as Barclays Capital and CIBC.

Beginning in 2005, his most recent efforts have been focused on designing and deploying next generation financial networks and data stream surveillance/analysis infrastructures and support organizations for leading edge electronic trading exchanges, The Philadelphia Stock Exchange (Phila.) and The Intercontinental Exchange (Atlanta) using MPLS, DWDM, 10Gig Ethernet and next-generation layer one surveillance switching technologies from various vendors.

Tom Tosh

Tom is a seasoned trainer and proven senior level consultant and analyst. He spent the last 10+ years at Network General where he was there Senior Consultant and Project Manager. He has recently founded Chi-Metrix where Tom prides himself on bringing his considerable skills to customers.

Tom feels that his skills, training and experience allows him to -
- Diagnose network and application performance issues.
- Perform network assessments, health checks and application baselines
- Provide coaching and training to help IT groups make better use of network tools.
- Derive actionable information from captured trace files
- Evaluate effectiveness of problem management practices (per ITIL)
- Develop visibility assessments to better target investments in tools
- Design and manage projects related to application rollouts and network changes.

Tom has served a wide variety of clients (corporations and non-profit organizations, as well as local, state and federal government agencies) all over North America, Australia and Japan. Tom can be reached at - tom.tosh (at) chi-metrix (dot) com

Jenny Wilson

Jenny is a dedicated trainer and proven network analyst with over 15 years of real network experience. She spent many years at Network General and is a Sniffer Master Instructor and Analyst. Jenny holds or has held a CNX , CCNP, CCDP, MCSE+I and an MCNE.

Jenny has written and presented many courses world wide and found solutions for many network issues. Jenny now focuses her energy on special consulting. She resides in Alabama even though she is originally from Australia. Now that all the potential for a real culture shock. Jenny can be reached at - jwilson (at) wil-tech (dot) com.

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