Summary

Career History

Education

Affiliations

Addendum: Patents

SUMMARY

Programmer and software analyst experienced in

• Software design, programming, testing, maintenance and user documentation
• Data communications, especially LAN and user interfaces, SNA and IP protocols, and IEEE LAN standards
• Creating and enhancing software tools
• Customer interaction

Career emphasis on product quality and scalable performance

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CAREER HISTORY

NCR Corporation, Roseville, Minnesota, 1985-2001
   Global supplier of technology solutions and support

Solutions Engineer, 1999-2001

• Provided direct telephone support to customers for UNIX and Cisco products, including problem analysis, installation and configuration assistance, and performance tuning.
• In addition to customer support, performed maintenance on NCR communications products, writing and testing software updates and revising user manuals.
• Extended test lab capabilities to address software scaling and performance issues.
• Obtained a patent on techniques for detecting data corruption in network tests.

Software Engineer, 1990-1999, reaching Senior Principal level

• Stabilized three generations of Token Ring peripherals and associated system interfaces, developing and releasing hundreds of updates to software and user manuals. Worked primarily in the C language; recent versions used a systems environment based on UNIX STREAMS.
• To meet evolving test requirements, designed, developed, and continually enhanced a LAN-based SNA test station supporting a wide variety of session configurations and data exchanges.
• Implemented peripheral device support for the SNA INN Token Ring product feature, collaborating with a parallel development group to define and meet their interface requirements.
• Fixed LAN protocol thrashing and internal queue overloads by redesigning data flow control at the adapter interface.
• Participated in the IEEE LAN and MAN Standards Committee as a member of working groups 802.1 (bridging, architecture, management, addressing, access control, virtual LANs) and 802.2 (Logical Link Control).
• Invented and patented a performance improvement for selective retransmission protocols: a more effective way to avoid redundant transmissions.

Network Engineer, 1987-1990

• Evaluated feature compatibility by comparison testing of NCR and competitor products.
• Extended test capacity by creating new trace analyzer programs, and by enhancing a scripted LAN station simulator.

Protocol Engineer, 1985-1987

• Corrected and verified protocol specifications for LPDA multiplexed modem diagnostics by planning and executing formal tests.

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EDUCATION

B.S., Computer Science and Mathematics majors, University of Wisconsin, Platteville, Wisconsin

B.A., Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan

Professional training includes:

• Cisco routers and switches
• UNIX System V and STREAMS
• Software engineering for quality
• Performance programming
• C and C++ programming languages
• SNA networks, including IBM NCP internals

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AFFILIATIONS

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Addendum: PATENTS

These patents are cited as evidence of ability and creativity; the rights are retained by the employer for whom the work was done.

I used to have each of these linked to the Patent Office online versions, but they keep changing the lookup format.

United States Patent 5,664,091: Method and system for avoiding unnecessary retransmissions using a selective rejection data link protocol

This variation on data communications protocols improves the efficiency of selective retransmission algorithms for both point-to-point and multicast data links, by more reliably determining when retransmissions are required.

United States Patent 6,044,480: Message generation and verification for a communication network

This is a method of testing the correct operation of data channels in a communications network. Test data is generated in a self-documenting pattern, so it can be verified at the receiver without requiring a master copy for comparison. The test messages can vary in content, and can be extended to any required length. A higher-efficiency version of the method can be used to check specifically for errors in segmentation and reassembly.

An implementation in test software saw extensive use in a communications laboratory.

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