Engineer High School
Resume:
Charles Taylor
abh8ft@r.postjobfree.com
Education
The University of Florida
Bachelor of Science in Decision and Information Sciences
Cisco Systems, Inc.
CCENT Certified
Skills Summary
Technologies
. Expert with 802.11 a/b/g/n wireless standards as well as many propriety
protocols.
. Expert with WPA, DHCP, DNS, TCP, UDP, SSH, SSL, Radius, PPPoE, and VLAN.
. Expert (over 15 years experience) with IPv4, experienced with IPv6.
. Experienced with RIP, OSPF, STP, and RSTP.
. Experienced with Nagios, Cacti, and general SNMP configuration/operation.
Programming Languages and Applications
. Fluent with PERL, HTML, and C#.
. Able to program in SQL, JavaScript, Cobol, C, Java, PHP, and VB Script
with the initial aid of reference materials.
. Experienced with WireShark (formerly Ethereal) for packet and protocol
analysis.
Operating and Server Systems
. Expert with Microsoft Windows 3.1 through Windows XP, Windows 7.
. Expert with Microsoft Windows Server 2000, experienced with 2003, 2008,
2008r2.
. Expert with Ubuntu and other Debian-based distributions of Linux.
. Experienced with VMware ESXi.
. Familiar with Mac OS X and Unix variants.
Personal Attributes
. Insatiable drive to find out how things work. The line between work and
personal projects tends to blur with me.
I am naturally curious. When I was three years old, I crossed the
wires on a plug and stuck it in an outlet, just to see what would
happen. Rather than deterring me, the resulting shock further
encouraged me to explore the unseen power of electricity. Even as a
young kid, I was far more interested in visiting Radio Shack than a
toy store. As a result, I have a better understanding of the
underlying principles of electricity, computing and wireless than
many people who have had more formal education. I still enjoy
playing with these technologies on and off the job. I love to buy
parts from SparkFun and experiment with them.
. I'm an excellent trouble-shooter. My holistic approach helps me find less
obvious problems and solutions.
Throughout my career, I have encountered all sorts of problems and
the above is a list of some of the technologies I have learned and
applied to resolve them. I take a whole-system prospective when I
encounter problems to grasp not only the problem itself, but the
root cause.
Sometimes the problem is with equipment itself, in which case I
often worked with manufacturers to get the bug repaired. Once we
were testing an upcoming version of routing software on one of our
access controllers. At first all seemed well, but we soon learned
that our Linux and Mac customers could not perform proper DNS
lookups. Using WireShark I quickly uncovered a problem in the DNS
responses from the router - the DNS TCP query response packets were
malformed. This analysis led to the prompt repair of the problem in
Mikrotik's RouterOS 3.0rc14.
Solving problems often involves paying attention to how customers
use the product. For example, one user at a school I worked at
complained that his mouse was broken. He was holding it upside down.
As a result, I learned that an engineer must not only think "like an
engineer", but also as the most computer illiterate client in order
to design and troubleshoot equipment.
In another case, the problem wasn't the user's fault but paying
attention to their actions still helped me solve the problem. I had
been dispatched to an Access Point outage in Orlando. This problem
was escalated because engineers had gone to check the unit already.
Each time when they arrived in the attic and began to test, they
could find no problems. Within half an hour of their departure
though, the problem returned. When I arrived, I encountered the same
scenario. The unit was fine, and once I left the apartment, the
problem returned. I went back to see the resident, this time
monitoring the unit from my phone continuously. It turned out that
some electrical work had recently been done in the closet of the
apartment (where the attic access panel is located). The power line
feeding our radio had been crossed with the power line for the
closet light switch! Every time someone came to check the unit, the
resident had turned on the closet light for them, restoring power to
the equipment. Once the engineer left, they turned the switch back
off, once again disabling the access point.
. I'm a perfectionist and very detail-oriented. I would rather find an
elegant solution to a problem than simply make it go away.
I take great pride in my work, and especially when people notice the
little details like neatly labeled and organized wiring. I know the
value in this is not purely aesthetic as it often saves time later
and reflects well on my company. When a contractor who was working
for me did a sloppy job, I told him, "Most people would walk away
from that just happy that it worked, but you can tell a true
engineer by the pride that comes through in a job done elegantly.
You never know who will have to work on something next or what
problems may come up. Do it right the first time and you'll be glad
you did."
I think long-term when working on problems. When I was working at
Interlachen High School, one of the problems we faced at the time
was students using Napster on school computers. The site only had a
single T1 at the time and it saturated pretty quickly when 300 or so
random students fired it up every class period, especially since
students actually try to break systems (which made the job an
excellent learning experience). Others had blocked the IP addresses
of the Napster servers and that worked for a while. The server list
kept changing though and sooner or later legitimate sites turned out
to be blocked and Napster was working again. Continuously updating
the lists was wasting a lot of time. To finally eradicate the
problem, I wrote a set of scripts to poll the Napster server list
regularly and update the IPChains (state of the art in 2000) in our
parameter routers to block new server IP addresses and restore
access to servers that were no longer active. This earned me the
infamous title of "the one who killed Napster" among the student
body.
At my current job, I often have to improvise with parts to adapt
equipment for the area where it is being installed. That includes
improving and sometimes replacing mounting equipment and also taking
into account the weather as much of the equipment is mounted outside
in places from snowy Michigan to blistering hot Florida. Apartment
managers are, understandably, often concerned about how mounted
equipment will look. I take great pride in being able to turn off
the shelf parts from Home Depot into wireless equipment that not
only does the job, but matches the look and feel of the system.
. I love working with wireless systems because it's as close to magic as
you can get.
If sending music and video through thin air isn't magic, I don't
know what is.
Career History
WindChannel Communications, Inc.
April 2004 - Present
Senior Systems Engineer (Lead)
. Design, deploy, performance test, manage, and diagnose hundreds of Wi-Fi
systems based on a variety of hardware.
I work on a variety of routed and bridged networks from small
apartment complexes to municipal systems for EMS support,
customizing and integrating each as the customer required. Vendors
include Cisco, Colubris (now HP), Ubiquiti, Mikrotik, and Trango.
. Created and now maintain our Cacti and Nagios monitoring systems along
with custom sensor scripting.
Among other things, I created a custom DHCP client that detects
rogue DHCP servers on our networks. Upon detection, it sends an SNMP
trap to a handler script I wrote that matches the rogue server's MAC
address against our customer login records and passes the customer's
user name to a passive sensor in Nagios.
. Design, program, and test in-house wireless access points, premise access
controllers, and routers with constant attention to the future of
wireless.
We started with standard wireless equipment, but quickly realized
that it did not meet our customer's needs and was much more
expensive than it needed to be. I significantly increased our
quality of service by creating and later, migrating wireless access
points and access control to custom-assembled Linux-based systems.
This change did wonders for the bottom line as well!
. Versed in all aspects of operating, managing, and maintaining Internet
and intranet services.
I have done everything from pulling Ethernet cable through attics
and coordinating installation crews to strategic planning and
coordination of resources for a company merger. I currently
supervise and maintain the operation of over 2,000 access points,
routers, and switches across more than 300 subnets, carrying traffic
from 12,000 customers and counting.
Taylor Innovations, LLC January
1997 - Present
Chief Executive Officer and Founding Partner
. Design, install, and maintain wired and wireless LAN and WAN networks,
mostly for small to medium businesses.
. Offer computer repair services for anyone who is sick of others telling
them that the only answer is to "reformat it."
St. John's GM Superstore November
2002 - April 2004
Network Administrator
. Maintained network infrastructure and security including GMAccess
satellite systems.
. Created and introduced new software and technology to produce more
seamless and functional computer interfaces, specifically through the use
of web-integrated database systems.
Interlachen High School June 1999 -
November 2002
Network Administrator
. Responsibilities included the security, maintenance, and upkeep of all
NT/2000 Servers, Citrix Servers, Linux Routers, Cisco Routers, seven
computer labs, and over seventy classroom systems - over 400 computers in
all.
. Designed and developed the district's first adaptive firewall system
capable of blocking all Napster traffic, regardless of the target port or
IP address while leaving other traffic untouched.
Putnam County School District, Dept. of Applied Technology April 1999 -
November 2002
Independent Systems Analyst
. Reworked district-wide IP infrastructure into a privately addressed
system to reduce the demand for public addresses.
. Produced scripted systems for the automated maintenance/reinstall and
upkeep of systems in computer labs throughout the district.
Peninsular Petroleum - Crescent City, FL February
1997 - March 1999
Electronic Data Processing Manager
. Upgraded the server and workstations from DOS and Netware to Windows NT.
. Assisted in the testing and development of the SIR (Statistical Inventory
Reconciliation) System, enabling JIT inventory control for the first time
in the fuel distribution industry.
Crescent City Jr./Sr. High School August 1995 -
February 1997
Network Assistant
. Proposed and developed new methods of maintaining lab workstation
configurations through drive cloning.
. Assisted the Network Administrator in managing three Netware Servers
(eventually migrated to NT Servers), five computer labs, and over seventy
classroom systems - over 200 systems in all.
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