About Me

June 29th, 2009

The scientifically impossible I do right away, the spiritually miraculous takes a bit longer.

ClapSo

I am a telecommunications, systems, networking and programming veteran with 16 years of experience. I provide design, consulting and software solutions for WiMAX, 3GPP, 3GPP2,  PoN and other  Ethernet/IP based networks.

I offer professional services in the spheres of RADIUS, VOIP, Internet, Real-time Billing, IP Routing (BGP/OSPF), network architecture and design, wireless technologies (WiFi, Microwave, 3G, WiMAX, iBurst/802.20),  Cisco (VPDN, MPLS, Metro-E), WiMAX ASN Gateways, Cisco SCE/SM, RDR/CDR processing, Solaris, Linux, Databases (Oracle, Postgres, Berkeley, MySQL) and various other telecommunications technologies.

I live in Johannesburg, South Africa and am 36 years of age. I’m married to my best friend Vincenzia, and have a 7-year old son Ruben, that is trying hard to be geekier than me.

Linux/OpenSource

I build  high-availability systems for  Linux such as,  DNS,  carrier-grade RADIUS systems, caching and real-time billing systems. I am involved in embedded Linux (MIPS/ARM) development  up to the point of raw BSP (Board Support Package) integration for new platforms.

I am also a Linux kernel contributor (http://www.kernel.org/pub//scm/linux/kernel/bkcvs/linux-2.5/drivers/usb/serial/ipw.c,v)

I built a comprehensive linux  systems management and configuration architecture and a forked Debian-etch distribution called neoLOGIX . It features a Cisco-like command-line interface and Web2.0 (uck)-ish web interface.

Programming

I develop in PHP, TCL/Tk, Perl, C, C++, Script, Microsoft VB/VC, Borland C++ and a plethora of other environments. I tend to learn languages as a hobby. Except Python. Never Python.

I use subversion for source-code management, and have integrated it with trac and a buildsystem to provide a signed debian-style APT repository for neoLOGIX.

I also work in Intel Assembler language, and MIPS/RISC instruction sets. Armed with ollydebug or SoftICE and IDAPro I can pretty much rip apart any executable, and reverse engineer if necessary.

Financial Systems

A large portion of my career  background is in the financial markets, and I have worked for a great number of Merchant and Commercial banks in South Africa, providing systems support, availability design, architecture and development skills.

I am very familiar with MDDS (Market Data Distribution Systems) such as Reuters, Dow-Jones, I-Net Bridge and financial instruments ranging from stock futures, derivatives and plain old shares on the LSE and JSE.

Web

I am  an expert in web programming, with skills ranging from Javascript/CSS/PHP/Perl/Ajax and the design and implementation of high performance and high availability web systems.

I built various publishers’  sites such as netassets.co.za, sundaytimes.co.za, businessday.co.za, engineeringnews.co.za and miningweekly.co.za using Vignette StoryServer on Solaris/Oracle,  IIS/ASP, and mod_perl reverse proxied by Squid. I was the architect for one of  South Africa’s largest content-aggregation and B2B portals for I-Net Bridge.

Conferences / Speaking

I am a regular speaker on broadband technologies, and systems in South Africa:

Contact me if you’d like me to be a speaker at your event.

I am also a moderator on the MyADSL iBurst, Sentech, and WiFI & Wisp Forums.

Career Networking

I’m available on Elance, and on Linkedin. I enjoy discussions and brainstorming on projects that are of interest.

Game Development

I’m an avid gamer, and hobbyist game developer. I’ve been involved in a number of Torque Game Engine projects – from Defenseturret – a crossplatform (Linux/Win32)  anticheat program for Tribes2, to Legends, a complete Tribes2-like game. Check out my garagegames.com profile to see what the latest developments are.

In the News

  • The Hatfield Connection
  • Telecomms competition arrives in numbers
  • Google News
  • Parliament:

    “If Sentech is not given the capacity – and this is the real issue – to beef up its network, how do we expect it to attract customers whom we hope will not be like Mr Roelf Diedericks who is currently putting his problems on the Internet and putting his correspondence with Sentech on the web; and these can be accessed at sentechsucks.co.za.

    This is exactly what the problem is, and our heart goes out to Sentech. So, this is what they have to deal with because they are just not given the capacity to do their job. With regard to advertising, they are putting up services but they haven’t got the capacity to deliver what Mr Diedericks wants in terms of broadband.”

    I consulted to Sentech on fixing their network shortly after this. The reality is simply that Sentech is/has been hamstrung by the legacy that is parastatal.

Curriculum Vitae

Mail me to get a copy of my CV.  No agencies, please.