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I am a telecommunications, systems, networking and programming veteran with twenty odd 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), LTE, TD-LTE, EPC, HSS, PCRF, OCS and various other telecommunications technologies.
Basecamp is in leafy Greenside, Johannesburg and I’m getting to my forties (gasp) am in my forties.
I also blog on this site. It’s mine. It has been for many years. I’m still trying to figure out why people need facebook.
Linux/OpenSource
I breathe code, and smoke (a bad habit), smoke (again).
For entertainment and profit, I build high-availability systems for the telecommunications and ISP market such as, DNS, carrier-grade RADIUS systems, caching and real-time billing systems.
I (used to be) involved in embedded Linux (MIPS/ARM) development up to the point of raw BSP (Board Support Package) integration for new platforms. I might just take this up again.
I am also a Linux kernel contributor (http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git;a=blob;f=drivers/usb/serial/ipw.c;h=ca77e88836bd224cf82ce601d6524cba25a98a6f;hb=HEAD)
In a previous venture, Neology, I’d been building 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.
We had a great set of products for ISP’s, some of which are still in use today. My RADIUS, Diameter, and LNS solutions are still working at several ISPs
All in the name of reproducible results. I guess that’s the point, isn’t it?
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 dont’ want to fight my editor with things that are invisible to the eye. Manly braces thank-you-very-much. 1TBS for all.
I use subversion mercurial for source-code management, and have integrated it with trac rhodecode and a custom buildsystem to provide a signed debian-style APT repository for neoLOGIX.
I also dabble in Intel Assembler language, and MIPS/RISC instruction sets when I need to find out what somebody thought they could hide. Armed with ollydebug or SoftICE and IDAPro I can pretty much rip apart any executable, and reverse engineer if necessary.
These days I enjoy GoLang, and CLI based PHP using reactPHP.
Financial Systems
A large portion of my career background is in the financial markets, and I have worked for a significant 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.
This got kind of boring after a while. I switched back to telecoms with Neology.
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.
I don’t really enjoy web programming so much, even though I’m crafty at it. Communications is more my passion, but then again, without a decent front-end, what is a system ?
Wireless Networking
I was at the brunt of Wimax, and mobile Wimax. It lost. LTE has won.
Neology was sold to Multisource in 2013. I was a director at Multisource, which then acquired iBurst/WBS, and eventually launched RAIN, a 4G/5G data-only mobile operator in South Africa.
In 2017 I exited my investment in RAIN, and joined Cool Ideas as a director and shareholder. Cool Ideas is the top rated ISP in South Africa for 2018, and 2020, 2021 and 2022.
Conferences / Speaking
I am a regular speaker on broadband technologies, and systems in South Africa:
- 2008 http://mybroadband.co.za/general/conference2008/speakers.html
- 2007 http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=93759
- 2006 http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=59459
- 2005 http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php?t=29585
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. Reverse engineering Tribes2 taught me a lot about various windows internals, a lot of which I ranted about in a “.plan” as was so popular with developers at the time. These days I just await the next great game. Preferably a multiplayer coop.
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.