Department Of Internal Affairs 
Network Administrator

BBS dial-up and X.25 experience was all the networking experience I had, so this change of role presented an extremely steep learning curve which I climbed with the assistance of the few experienced staff that remained after the merger and considerable time with manuals.

Duties included:

• Design, construction, installation & documentation for cables and connectors for serial and network devices.
• Printer and terminal operation, using termservers and termmanagers.
• Configuration and operation of a bridged WAN connecting sites in Auckland, Rotorua, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.
• X.25 terminal and printer operation from small sites and dial-up locations.
• Configuration and operation of several email gateways, involving CEO (DG/AOS), Unix, and MHS (Netware).

Achievements:

• Expansion and upgrade of the WAN to higher speeds and two additional locations.
• Migration from a bridged XNS network using point to point links, to a Frame Relay based routed TCP/IP network.
• Establishment of MHS as the backbone for PC LAN email.
• Connection to the Internet, with the provision of email gateways and gopher and WWW server facilities.