Coles is the largest supermarket chain in Australia. In addition to supermarkets, the group also owns Coles Express fuel & convenience stores as well as Liquorland & Vintage Cellars liquor chains. The company has a MAN ring in Melbourne connecting its head quarters, support centre and other corporate offices as well as a nation-wide network utilising a varied mix of technologies like Telstra BDSL, ASDSL, WAAS, CCME etc. The company also own two redundant data centres at Tallyho and Tooronga localities in Melbourne using platforms like Cisco Nexus, SAN, Radware load balancers, F5 BIGIP GTM etc and technologies like Fabric Path, OTV, FEX, VPC etc. Currently I am the SME for load balancing in the organisation. The job responsibilities also involve project delivery, operational support and other BAU activities.

La Trobe University is one of the premier university and research centre in Australia. The university has campuses in Bundoora, Bendigo, Albury-Wodonga, Shepparton and Mildura. All the campuses are interconnected using fibre optic links and Telstra microwave links. The university network is connected to the Internet through AARNET gateway service. The job mainly involves providing operational support for the university data, voice, LAN and WAN infrastructure, developing technical projects and their implementation, constant updating of network documentation and monitoring of network metrics for optimum performance. The duties also include resolving escalated networks faults as well as liaising with external contractors for cabling projects.

Massey University is one of New Zealand’s leading university and research centre catering both local as well as international students and scholars. The university has four main campuses, two in Palmerston North and one each in Auckland and Wellington. There are also around ten small offices throughout New Zealand. All the main campuses are interconnected using Telecom NZ Private Office Network (PON) service and all other small offices are connected to the main corporate campus in Palmerston North using Branch Office WAN technologies DSL and VPN. The university data network is also connected to the Internet through Telecom NZ Internet Gateway service and to the KAREN Research network through Telstra Gateway. The job mainly involves providing operational support for the university data, voice, LAN and WAN infrastructure, developing technical projects and their implementation, constant updating of network documentation and monitoring of network metrics for optimum performance. The duties also include resolving escalated faults related to network systems like DHCP, DNS, Reverse Proxy and Radius as well as liaising with duty operators to resolve other general faults like network printing, Domain Authentication issues etc

This was a contract position based in the lab involved in pre-commissioning testing of Xylan chassis based switching systems, discrete composite Layer 2/Layer 3 switches as well as testing the product MIBs on HP Openview. The job involved formulating test specifications and procedures for testing various functions and comparing the results against industry standard benchmarks.

Multimedia Technology owned the Property Shop kiosk network in the Wellington region. The kiosks display real estate listings as well other property related services like Government Valuation (GV), Legal Services, Mortgage Broker information etc. The job involved administration of NT based LAN in the Operations Centre as well as monitoring and troubleshooting problems in the ISDN based WAN. 3Com Netbuilder II Central Office Router, 3Com Remote Office Router, 3Com E1 ISDN WAN Extender, IBM Pentium Server etc were the equipments used and TCP/IP was the networking protocol.

Escotel (now Idea) is one of the leading cellular communications provider in the South Indian state of Kerala. The job in the Operations and Information department involved installation, configuration, maintenance and troubleshooting of Windows NT based LAN, Microsoft Mail Server, LAN infrastructure using Madge switches, Nortel Micom Multiplexer based WAN, interfacing of the Lucent 5ESS Cellular switch to the DEC Alpha based billing engine using Nupon terminal servers etc. TCP/IP and NETBEUI were the networking protocols used and HP OpenView was used as the network management platform.

Accel is a leading computer services company in South India. The job in the Customer Supports division involved installing, upgrading and troubleshooting computer systems, peripherals, LAN, UNIX hosts etc. Was later responsible for Customer Call Management and handling escalated cases.