EMPLOYMENT HISTORY:

After a change in management and company re organization, Steven remained with the company performing his previous job function and system administration of the company’s ISP platform.

Steven was responsible for the redesign, purchase, installation, configuration and maintenance of 9 TB FAS940c Netapp Filer storage systems with offsite snapmirroing and backup, Openldap cluster for central authentication and five node DNS architecture. Also the customer four node CommuniGate Pro Mail cluster with SSL POP, IMAP, SMTP AUTH, webmail, addressbook, functionality integrating with ldap cluster offering various secure authentication methods. After a company merge Steven migrated mail domains and accounts from courier IMAP to CommuniGate and offered virus scanning, SMTP Rate limiting and Email Lawful Interception saving the company 200K Euros. Installed and configured external BigBrother monitoring and MRTG/RRDTool graphing. Steven developed many Perl applications in this role such as a Centralised DHCP Lease Logger database, Email Interception, ZNuew Telephone Monitoring and web based support applications for external companies to monitor Cable Modems. Networking equipment such as Alteon Load Balancers, Nortel Passport 8600, Netscreen and linux firewalls were also supported.

ISH purchased and upgraded the Cable Television Network in Nordrhein-Westfalen to a Hybrid Fibre-Coax network offering an estimated 4.5 million customers Telephony, Digital Television and Broadband Internet access. The position was based in the Network Operations Centre as 3rd Level Technical support for the ISH ISP services namely DNS, web, Email, News, Instant Messaging, Streaming Media, Gaming, LDAP, NetApp filers. This was an excellent opportunity to work with large scale systems and new technologies. Steven was personally responsible for the setup, configuration, security and mirroring of Jabber Instant Messaging Platform, Dnews Usenet services, Lightwave Console Servers. This was a Solaris 8 environment.

The SCRAN Project is a £14 million National Lottery project to create a web database of Scottish Culture and History, a database of 1.5 Million records with approximately 4,000 licensed institutions. By joining at the beginning of the project Steven has been responsible for the purchase, configuration and maintenance of the computer systems and IT infrastructure, taking SCRAN to its current medium-sized office network and cluster of Solaris servers offering web Database and Image Watermarking services to the public. Systems Administration covered many areas: web Design/Programming/Management, Database Design/Administration, Network Management, Data Conversion Programming, Tech Support and Staff Training. It was an excellent opportunity to set up systems from scratch installing, configuring and maintaining Apache/FTP/Email /DNS/File and Print servers, various databases, web interfaces and image watermarking facilities, then later ensuring these systems were Y2K-compliant. Also file sharing configuration between the various operating systems. Solid programming proved to be invaluable in many situations, ranging from various day-to-day administration tasks, creating various new web databases and network tools, thus saving the company a substantial amount of money. He also created a Perl module for Apache to authenticate from multiple databases using cookies. As the project progressed he became involved in recruiting more IT staff enabling him to take on more managerial duties, for example overseeing upgrades to Windows 2000, Implementation of firewall and E-commerce systems.

As web programmer, Steven created web interfaces to access an Oracle database and produce an online student tutorial. Setting up and configuring a web-based messaging system, similar to Internet news, was also a key part of this position.

This position involved providing support in maintaining and installing new software on the University’s HP-UX network. Setting up and constructing web interfaces for mailing list software, organising new data backup procedures, producing web to Oracle interfaces to be used to allocate IP numbers for University computers according to their new subnetting scheme. Whilst at this position he undertook a project to produce a standard set of bibliographic icons for international use by the IFLA. The project was received well at a conference in Beijing where they were proposed to become an Internet Standard.

EMPLOYMENT WHILST STUDYING:

This position involved maintaining PC systems and connecting the company to the Internet. The company now has access to Email, Telnet, FTP, USENET and the World Wide Web.

Designing and creating web pages and structures along with imagemaps and CGI programs for interactive web pages. Published the University’s Information Services Magazine on the web. He implemented a web structure to enable the different departments of the university to progress on to the net. This employment involved consulting clients to assess their needs, present them with prototype solutions and refining these solutions, if required, to the clients requirements.

Worked teaching Word Perfect and Quattro Pro to students on evening classes. This involved helping the students and answering their questions.

This was a position of responsibility, dealing with the public, analysing and solving problems quickly and efficiently. It involved maintaining and repairing computers, all aspects and platforms. He dealt with many varying problems from Windows, disk failures, printers, and network problems. The position also involved working in a team with other advisors.