Resumè
Mark Newton
PO Box 8138
Station Arcade Post Office
SA 5000
Telephone: (08) 8267-2910
Email: newton@atdot.dotat.org
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1 Relevant Employment History
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April 1999 - Present Internode Systems Pty Ltd, Network Engineer
Internode is one of South Australia's largest regional ISPs. My work has included maintenance of network configurations, WAN engineering, high-end technical support for Internode corporate customers, internal applications development, capacity planning, design and deployment of Internode's WAN and VLAN infrastructure, bugfixing, and virtually everything else you'd expect a Network Engineer type guy to do. I've also been involved in some of the technical R&D for Agile Communications, Internode's wholly-owned Telco subsidiary.
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Dec 1997 - April 1999 Camtech Pty Ltd, Senior Trainer
Delivered SunService and Silicon Graphics courses on UNIX system- and network-administration Australia-wide and in New Zealand. Developed networking and UNIX courseware for Camtech and Silicon Graphics.
Defined and implemented policies and procedures used by Camtech's training division for preparation and delivery of customer training. Designed and wrote the booking software used by the Training Division for coordinating courses, enrolling students and contracting external instructors.
Also worked with Consulting Services Division to continue the role described below.
Note: Communica Systems was bought by Camtech in December 1997. This role change did not involve a change of employment. I have been continuously employed by Camtech/Communica since Nov 1994.
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Nov 1994 - Dec 1997 Communica Systems Pty Ltd, Consultant / Trainer
Assisted several hundred customers with day-to-day UNIX-related system administration, security, networking issues, enterprise computing, server installation, performance monitoring, analysis and tuning, and other Open Systems problems. Provided SunSoft, SunService and Silicon Graphics UNIX training courses at introductory, intermediate and advanced levels. Wrote Silicon Graphics "Performance Co-Pilot" courseware for advanced performance monitoring on high-end multiprocessor supercomputers. Wrote perl and C end-user applications for Government and Corporate customers of Communica Systems and Camtech.
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Feb 1993 - Nov 1994 Robway Safety Systems, Analyst/Programmer
Designed and wrote safety-critical embedded systems software in C and assembly language for Motorola 68HC705 and Intel 80551 processors for industrial monitoring and safety applications. Wrote C code for x86 PCs. Developed release engineering and version control methodologies for "shrink-wrapped" customer releases.
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Dec 1991 - Jan 1992 Mitsubishi Motors Australia Ltd, Systems Programmer
Wrote protocol driver software for a PLC-controlled industrial robot used on production line floor.
2 Education
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Jan 1989 - Dec 1992 Flinders University of South Australia, Bachelor of Science
I commenced a B.Sc course majoring in Computer Science in Jan 1989 but never completed it due to financial reasons. I consistently reached high levels of achievement, completing the majority of my computer science courses in the top 10% of the class.
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Oct 1996, Cisco, Advanced Cisco Router Configuration
This course included RIP, BGP, IGRP and OSPF routing protocols, interface configuration for TCP/IP, SNA, Appletalk and Novell protocols, network planning and details such as using "bandwidth on demand" techniques to work around temporary outages or congestion conditions.
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July 1998, Silicon Graphics, Inc., IRIX Kernel Internals
This five-day course (usually only given to SGI internal staff) covers low-level MIPS CPU architecture, SGI ORIGIN system architecture, operation of ORIGIN routers and hubs, the IRIX Virtual Memory subsystem, trap handling, XFS, SGI multiprocessor architectures, crash dump analysis, the IRIX system call interface, device drivers, networking and kernel debugging. The course included solving kernel problems by reading/changing IRIX source code to put crash dump analysis theory into practice.
3 Volunteer Work and Amateur Persuits
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Oct 1992 - present Australian Public Access Networking Association (APANA).
I am a founding member of APANA, and have maintained an active involvement in it since my original membership began. I managed, configured and maintained the South Australian network hub site from Oct 1992 until mid-1996. I also served as Deputy Regional Coordinator for South Australia and South Australia's representative on APANA's national management committee in 1995, and national vice-president in 1994.
The Australian Public Access Networking Association is an amateur group of communications enthusiasts which runs large Internet connected networks in Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra, Darwin and Brisbane. During my involvement I owned and operated one of Adelaide's first Internet Service Providers, known as cleese.apana.org.au, and provided UUCP, SLIP and dialup PPP connectivity via a UNIX-based network of PC systems and Sun workstations to APANA members in Adelaide, Perth, Mount Gambier and central Australia.
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Jul 1993 - Jan 1994, Disability Information Resource Centre (DIRC), System Administrator.
DIRC used to run a Bulletin-Board Service (BBS) called Common Ground. As part of this service, they provided their users with Internet connectivity via a UnixWare System-V Release 4 system utilizing a 4-wire PAPL to Adelaide University and a pair of Dataplex NTUs. I assisted DIRC staff with installation, setup and ongoing administration of the system itself, its networking capabilities, sendmail and INN for email and
news, and the gateway to the BBS, on a volunteer basis.
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Mar 1995 - Present, Adelaide University Choral Society (AUCS), Flinders University Choral Society (FUCS).
I have been singing second-bass with FUCS and AUCS since 1995. During that time I have participated in several major orchestral productions, including Hector Berlioz's Requièm in the Adelaide Entertainment Centre, Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky in the Melbourne Arts Center's concert hall and Adelaide University's Elder Hall, and Beethoven's 9th Symphony (Choral) also in Elder Hall.
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Dec 1998 - Present, The FreeBSD Project, CVS Committer
During 1998 I ported a System V Release 4 UNIX emulation layer for the FreeBSD kernel. The emulator was derived from code in the NetBSD source tree,which I ported to FreeBSD and implemented as a loadable kernel module. The emulation environment includes system calls with SVID semantics (ported from NetBSD), an emulation of SysVR4 STREAMS networking infrastructure (also ported from NetBSD), original loadable kernel module "glue" code and original low-level x86 machine-specific interrupt and trap handling code. The FreeBSD emulator was committed to the 4.0-CURRENT branch of the FreeBSD source tree in January 1999. Subsequent work has included alterations to the FreeBSD ELF loader, bug-fixes, and functionality improvements.
4 UNIX Experience
I have ten years worth of experience with using and administering UNIX systems.
During that time, I have accumulated knowledge on:
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Basic UNIX tools
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Scripting with Bourne Shell, C-Shell and perl
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Implementation of WWW-based applications via perl CGI scripts
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Email using sendmail and some MMDF.
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USEnet news with cnews and INN
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TCP/IP and UUCP networking over LANs and WANs.
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Fileserver setup with NFS
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System integration with samba (allowing UNIX and Windows/Windows-NT interoperability)
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Capacity planning for everything from small desktop environments to multi-terabyte enterprise servers
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Cisco router configuration.
Additionally, through my Camtech/Communica and APANA exposure, I have become known as a guru in the following "black arts":
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Internet firewalling
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Performance analysis and tuning on large systems and networks of systems
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UNIX internals (kernels)
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Device driver authorship and configuration
I have extensively used:
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SunOS 4.x
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Sun's Solaris 2.x (all revisions)
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Silicon Graphics' IRIX 5.3 and 6.x
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Hewlett Packard's HP-UX
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SCO's OpenServer (all revisions)
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FreeBSD (all revisions, including 386BSD versions)
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NetBSD/sun3 and NetBSD/sparc
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Linux
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Digital UNIX (incl. OSF/1 releases)
I have also had moderate experience with:
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UnixWare
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IBM's AIX
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Encore Umax 4.2
I've had more experience than any sane person could possibly want with:
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Microsoft Windows (all revisions)
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Microsoft Windows NT (all revisions)
5 Summary
I am a confident, customer-focused, self-driven achiever with wide-ranging computer expertise. I specialize in UNIX, open-systems integration, internetworking and embedded systems, with any shortcomings assisted by the fact that my background and experience enables me to pick up new concepts quickly.
I am a proficient programmer in C, perl and UNIX shell script languages. I am also comfortable with most assembly languages. I have a working knowledge of Ada, Lisp, Pascal and BASIC, and have the ability to learn new languages without trouble. My C code
has been widely deployed to tens of thousands of users, through my production-quality efforts at Robway, Camtech and the FreeBSD Project.
I have extensive networking knowledge: I understand and regularly make use of TCP/IP routing, DNS, NFS, email, proxy ARP, USEnet news. I have an extensive home network consisting of UNIX-based PC systems, SPARCstations, a Sun-3/60 and a Labtam X-terminal,
all permanently connected to the Internet via a system configured as a router. I can write reliable software which makes use of the Berkeley socket mechanism. I have designed and implemented custom designed-for-purpose TCP/IP firewall software for Australian National Railways' payroll gateway, and have assisted more than a dozen customers with their deployment of the TIS Firewall Toolkit.
I know my way around UNIX. I know the "right" commands to do almost any job, and where the "right" commands don't exist I am perfectly willing and able to rapidly write my own software to accomplish a given task. I am comfortable in Berkeley or System-V UNIX environments, and have experience with system administration under virtually every mainstream version of UNIX and many non-mainstream UNIX-based operating systems. I understand detailed kernel internals in BSD and SysV based systems, and enough high-level details to apply that knowledge to other UNIX based kernels.
I have the ability to work closely with other people with a wide range of backgrounds and skills to accomplish a task. I have a sense of humor and social skills which I find useful in teamwork situations.
I have documentation skills which I have used to produce reports, summaries, proposals and submissions to management, in addition to online and printed software documentation. I have written entire UNIX-based courses, including a performance tuning course for IRIX 6.2 used world-wide by Silicon Graphics Corporation.
I'm not an Abba fan.
I believe my broad range of skills would be an asset to any company desiring expertise in UNIX and networking.
Mark Newton
February 8 1999