Skills
Contents
Ted's History With Technology
My background has a wide range of skills leveraging computer technology; while my education and early career focused on business administration, I quickly found my real enjoyment in "working" was when work started to feel actually feel like "fun". That happened when I bridged by early career experience at Heiser Automotive with technology. A rough chronology of my career and how technology guided it below!
1980's
My first computer was an IBM PCjr a great starter computer, 5 1/4" floppy drive and 128k memory. Great for learning how to write some basic, and running Lotus 1-2-3. A spreadsheet.... can you imagine work before spreadsheets? It was the first real computer I had put to some practical use. I graduated from college in 1987, and from there, eventually worked my way up to a Leading Edge 386 with a whopping 40MB hard drive. Seemed like a huge change from just a few years earlier with the 128k memory and no hard drive.
In the later '80s as I finished school, I transitioned to full time employment with Heiser Automotive. Heiser is a large dealership in metro Milwaukee, and our rental department was one of the few organizations that targeted people without credit cards. For a mere $75 to $250 deposit, we'd let you rent a car, provided we could verify employment, do a credit check, and look you up in a reverse directory. Occasionally a car would disappear, but they'd always show up somewhere (skip tracing is a whole different story). The operation was very manual - writing the contracts by hand, managing the reservations, inventory. And while managing a 4 site operation provided good business experience, after several years of this of operating manually, I was looking for a change.
Hence, my first career intersection with technology. I researched, proposed and helped implement an early WAN to automate our business. We installed a server - a generic 286 box running some flavor of Unix, and dumb terminals linked at the remote sites by early multi-tech modems. Installing the WAN, and seeing the change in how we managed our reservations, our inventory, down to how the contracts were printed - this was a real joy - technology changing the fundamental way in how we did business. Even so, the automotive business has it's limits, and it was time for a change.
1990's
Data Plus: My First Internet Service Provider
The 1990's were probably the most exciting for me in my career, given that I had found a passion for technology, and could now tie it to my job. While I had thoroughly enjoyed deploying the WAN at Heiser, I sought to make technology more central to what I did for a living. Funny how opportunities present themselves. One day I had a piece of a newspaper flying through my backyard in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. I reached down to pick up that newspaper, and noticed a help wanted ad for "T&T Computers" in Manitowoc. A small company started by John Torrison and Peter Tait, later called "Data Plus" was a provider of PCs, Networks, repair services - a VAR or value added reseller of PCs. The position was for a commercial sales representative - selling PCs and Networks - I felt fully qualified, given I had just installed a WAN, so off I went, applied and soon after had a new job. I learned a lot in my time spent at Data Plus - we sold Novell and LANtastic networks to businesses in Manitowoc and Sheboygan counties, targeting the new need for companies to have a server to share and store files, along with the networking of peripherals. While I primary knocked on doors and sold commecial accounts, I helped in other areas (being 6'9" tall is handy for pulling network cable!)
My job at Data Plus got interesting as I started to see this thing called the Internet emerge. I had been a user of Compuserve and Delphi services for some time now, and was intrigued with the possibilities of how computers were being connected over this "Internet" thing. IRC, FTP, Telnet, Gopher, all this fascinated me, and while some services were now becoming "available to the public" - few people outside academia knew what all of this "Internet" stuff was about.
As time marched forward, it became clear to me that Data Plus needed to become an ISP. Nevermind that hardly anyone in Manitowoc or Sheboygan counties knew what an ISP was, I was determined to bring the internet to the door steps of our corner of Wisconsin. I reached out and contacted a company in Milwaukee called Alpha.net (Alpha dot net) and inquired about connecting to them in Milwaukee. They were proud of bringing a DS3 up from Chicago to Milwaukee, but weren't sure about the idea of "reselling access" to someone who was going to leverage their connection. After convincing my boss that this Internet thing was going to help differentiate Data Plus from other VARs, he and I established a relationship with Alpha.net, secured a T1 link, and brought capacity first to Sheboygan.
And this is where the fun really begins; no one told me how to actually set up an ISP - Alpha.net gave us a few hints, like don't try to learn programming a Cisco router to start, instead, grab a Livingston. But otherwise, it was my purchasing a lot of O'Reilly books (DNS & Bind, Sendmail) and learning much more about UNIX. I leveraged BSDi and installed it on a Leading Edge consumer based PC to start, hooked up our CSU/DSU, and strung a dozen or so Multi-tech modems off the Livingston. Before long, we were an ISP! And I was now out selling not just LANs, but holding seminars for local businesses, telling them "check this Internet thing out - you're going to want to be on it!". That was only 20 years ago - again, like pre-spreadsheet days, it's hard to imagine business pre-internet.
BBN: The FIRST Internet Provider
(Still editing here!)
3 of 99+
info.inet.access › good experience: bbn/gtei/nap.net 1 post by 1 author
bryan s. blank 2/28/99
hey, turned up a circuit the other day to bbn/gtei/nap.net, very
impressive, took less than 5mins including bgp turnup, they had
their filters ready to go and everything went without a glitch.
the bandwidth looks as good as froglo's, without the ATM
circuits. highly recommended, ted lango, tla...@bbn.com, is our
sales guy there.
"what's your AS?"
"we're AS1"
extremely impressive traceroutes are below ...
traceroute to www.mindspring.com (207.69.200.188), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 dni-core7206-1-fa0-0.discovernet.net (206.165.166.1) 0.593 ms
0.525 ms 0.428 ms
2 s11-0-0-16.nyc1-cr2.bbnplanet.net (4.0.164.189) 3.721 ms 3.725 ms
3.753 ms
3 f0-0.nyc1-br2.bbnplanet.net (4.0.40.17) 3.685 ms 4.067 ms 17.819
ms
4 h3-0-0.nyc4-br2.bbnplanet.net (4.0.2.182) 4.404 ms 5.144 ms 4.739
ms
5 p3-0.nyc4-nbr2.bbnplanet.net (4.0.5.29) 7.264 ms 4.94 ms 26.801
ms
6 p2-1.vienna1-nbr2.bbnplanet.net (4.0.3.125) 28.743 ms 11.655 ms
9.422 ms
7 p1-0.vienna1-nbr3.bbnplanet.net (4.0.5.46) 9.096 ms 13.427 ms
35.943 ms
8 p1-2.atlanta1-nbr1.bbnplanet.net (4.0.5.142) 24.607 ms 23.53 ms
44.484 ms
9 p11-0-0.atlanta1-br1.bbnplanet.net (4.0.5.121) 39.874 ms 27.871 ms
24.746 ms 10 fa0-0-0.atlanta1-cr1.bbnplanet.net (4.0.3.246) 73.298 ms 30.744 ms 24.296 ms 11 h1.mindspring2.bbnplanet.net (4.0.128.250) 24.515 ms 25.79 ms 24.503 ms 12 wwwftp3-atl.mindspring.com (207.69.200.188) 26.559 ms 24.873 ms 24.755 ms
traceroute to www.digex.net (207.87.16.114), 30 hops max, 40 byte
packets
1 dni-core7206-1-fa0-0.discovernet.net (206.165.166.1) 0.603 ms
0.522 ms 0.429 ms
2 s11-0-0-16.nyc1-cr2.bbnplanet.net (4.0.164.189) 3.713 ms 3.735 ms
6.292 ms
3 f0-0.nyc1-br2.bbnplanet.net (4.0.40.17) 4.013 ms 4.928 ms 3.728
ms
4 h3-0-0.nyc4-br2.bbnplanet.net (4.0.2.182) 4.998 ms 4.837 ms 4.531
ms
5 p3-0.nyc4-nbr2.bbnplanet.net (4.0.5.29) 5.365 ms 6.401 ms 4.326
ms
6 p2-1.vienna1-nbr2.bbnplanet.net (4.0.3.125) 8.771 ms 9.128 ms
11.598 ms
7 p1-0-0.vienna1-br2.bbnplanet.net (4.0.2.70) 9.634 ms 10.404 ms
9.106 ms
8 iad1-core3-s1-1-0.atlas.digex.net (165.117.56.173) 10.447 ms 9.923
ms 9.563 ms
9 iad1-core1-fa4-0-0.atlas.digex.net (165.117.129.1) 93.002 ms
88.095 ms 113.146 ms 10 dca1-cpe1-p11-0-0.atlas.digex.net (165.117.52.229) 15.814 ms 24.44 ms 15.377 ms 11 dca1-cpe2-fa8-0-0.atlas.digex.net (165.117.17.42) 16.316 ms 21.597 ms 24.086 ms 12 www.digex.net (207.87.16.114) 15.923 ms 16.672 ms 18.121 ms
traceroute to www.uu.net (208.229.230.133), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 dni-core7206-1-fa0-0.discovernet.net (206.165.166.1) 0.557 ms
0.503 ms 0.432 ms
2 s11-0-0-16.nyc1-cr2.bbnplanet.net (4.0.164.189) 3.951 ms 3.712 ms
3.755 ms
3 f0-0.nyc1-br2.bbnplanet.net (4.0.40.17) 3.813 ms 3.592 ms 3.881
ms
4 h5-0-0.nyc4-br2.bbnplanet.net (4.0.2.186) 4.391 ms 4.904 ms 4.256
ms
5 p3-0.nyc4-nbr2.bbnplanet.net (4.0.5.29) 4.935 ms 4.53 ms 5.397 ms 6 p3-1.vienna1-nbr2.bbnplanet.net (4.0.3.129) 9.548 ms 9.371 ms
8.759 ms
7 pos8-0-0.br1.tco1.alter.net (137.39.23.13) 9.86 ms 9.645 ms 9.282
ms
8 111.ATM2-0.XR1.TCO1.ALTER.NET (146.188.160.66) 16.187 ms 14.252 ms
14.333 ms
9 193.ATM11-0-0.GW3.TCO1.ALTER.NET (146.188.161.121) 14.474 ms
14.377 ms 16.07 ms 10 uunt2-tco1-gw.customer.ALTER.NET (157.130.32.206) 15.858 ms 22.166 ms 14.828 ms 11 host230-144.uuweb.com (208.229.230.144) 41.281 ms * 16.673 ms
|o|----------------------------------------------------------------------|o| |o| bryan s. blank (203)-351-1178 voice |o| |o| senior systems analyst (203)-351-1186 fax |o| |o| discovernet, incorporated (800)-209-0223 emerg |o|
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