Internet infrastructure
BGP, IPv4/IPv6, IS-IS, OSPF, MPLS, EVPN/VXLAN, peering, transit, address policy, RPKI/ROV and the operational bits that make a service-provider network stay useful.
NETWORK OPERATOR / SYSTEMS ENGINEER / SPEAKER
I run networks.
I also poke at the assumptions around them.
I work on Internet routing, systems infrastructure, routing security, cyber-defence exercises and local AI platforms. Most of my useful work happens where a neat diagram has already stopped explaining the problem.
2007 →Swiss network-operator community
2011 →RIPE and operator meetings
2014 →public BGP / routing workshops
20+ yrssystems and network engineering
01 / WORK
Where I am useful.
Operator work, architecture, escalation and teaching. I still like getting to the console when that is the shortest path to the truth.
Systems engineering
Linux and BSD, virtualisation, storage, identity, monitoring, datacenter platforms, migrations and the interfaces where “it must be the network” stops being an adequate diagnosis.
Cyber defence
Infrastructure and organisational work around multinational cyber-defence exercises, plus security engineering from the perspective of someone who has spent a long time operating the systems being defended.
Local AI platforms
Private model serving, GPU-backed local inference, platform operations and adversarial testing. I am interested in AI when the hardware, privacy, failure modes and operating costs are real constraints.
Teaching & speaking
Routing, switching, virtualisation, security and infrastructure for apprentices, students and working engineers. Talks usually come from something we actually built, broke or investigated.
Technical advisory
Architecture, incident escalation and operational improvement for connectivity providers, datacenter operators, hosting companies and large international organisations. Some client work is intentionally anonymous here.
LOCKED SHIELDS 2025 · TALLINN · organisational / industry-partner side of the exercise.
02 / CYBER DEFENCE
Helping make the exercise work.
For Locked Shields and Crossed Swords 2025 I worked with the organisational and industry-partner teams, supporting exercise infrastructure and operations.
My work sat around infrastructure, local AI systems and exercise operations. That is also where I tend to approach security from: understand how the system really runs, then find the places where the assumptions stop holding.
03 / FIELD LOG
Work, talks, writing and the places around them.
A chronological view of the operator, hacker and security communities I keep ending up in.
2026
Advancements in Routing Security on Global Scale
Routing-security practice from the operator side: what is deployable now, what is changing, and where the gaps still are.
Programme ↗Questioning the IPv8 Proposal
An operator reading of an ambitious protocol proposal, with rather more questions about deployment and operations than about the slideware.
Read at RIPE Labs ↗RIPE 92, Edinburgh
Back at RIPE, following the measurement and routing sessions and joining discussions around RPKI data and ASPA. Some of those questions apparently travelled further than the room.
EVENTS FOSDEM · Brussels · Disobey · Helsinki · Netnod Meeting · Stockholm · Easterhegg · Koblenz · RIPE 92 · Edinburgh · nog.fi · Tampere
2025
Locked Shields + Crossed Swords
Worked with the organisational and industry-partner teams on exercise infrastructure and operations, including local AI/model-serving infrastructure and adversarial testing.
Supporting Internet-measurement research
Helped an Internet-measurement project with a few production routing changes and infrastructure support. The resulting ACM IMC 2025 paper includes an acknowledgement.
Paper ↗How to build and self-host CTF challenges using a language model
A practical local GenAI stack: model serving, self-hosting, hardware constraints and an adversarial challenge environment.
Local AI challenge infrastructure
Operated the self-hosted AI platform and model-serving infrastructure behind the challenge environment, and spent a fair amount of time trying to break it through adversarial testing.
Easterhegg 2025 ↗Adversarial testing and an occasional AI detox.
Co-authored two pieces on adversarial testing of generative AI and on keeping some deliberate distance from it.
Let’s break some AI
Hands-on adversarial testing around the local challenge platform.
EVENTS Disobey · Helsinki · Easterhegg · Hamburg · WHY2025 · Netherlands · DENOG17 · Essen · BalCCon · Novi Sad · 39C3 · Hamburg
2024
RIPE meeting
Operator-community discussions, hallway conversations and the usual working-group sessions.
Meeting ↗Disarray2024
A practical talk about building a home lab, using it to experiment with real systems, and why more people should learn by running and breaking their own infrastructure.
Event recap ↗EVENTS Disobey · Helsinki · Disarray · Baltic Sea · DENOG16 · Berlin · BalCCon · Novi Sad · 38C3 · Hamburg
2023
Using IXP Manager to Run a Transit Provider Network
Using exchange-point software in a service-provider network, with the compromises and operational lessons that come with doing that for real.
Programme ↗How we caused a route leak: anatomy of a routing incident
A real route leak, how we got there, what it did, and what changed afterwards.
Little Bobby’s First Bigger Routeleak
A production routing incident, an AS-SET that did not behave as expected, and the post-mortem.
EVENTS RIPE 86 · Rotterdam · RIPE 87 · Rome · Disobey · Helsinki · Easterhegg · Hamburg · DENOG15 · Berlin · Chaos Communication Camp · Mildenberg · 37C3 · Hamburg
2022
Running the camp IXP at MCH2022
At MCH2022 I ran the event IXP on pyro.institute using IXP Manager, with AS58299, AS41666 and FREETRANSIT / AS41051 among the connected networks.
MCH2022 IXP wiki ↗A Story From The Trenches
Operational networking stories from the provider side.
nog.fi meeting ↗OSINT from the perspective of an ISP
A hands-on evening around the information an operator can pull together from an IP address or network: RIR data, BGP, traceroutes, reverse DNS, WHOIS and the surrounding infrastructure.
Workshop notes ↗WireGuard and MikroTik, on actual routers
Hosted a small practical workshop with TurkuSec, building WireGuard setups on MikroTik hardware instead of stopping at a slide deck.
Workshop announcement ↗EVENTS MCH2022 · Netherlands · TurkuSec · Turku · BalCCon · Novi Sad
2021
Executive Board candidate
Stood for the RIPE NCC Executive Board with a focus on operator experience, education and bringing more people into the networking community.
2020
EVENTS FOSDEM · Brussels · Disobey · Helsinki
2019
Internet Exchanges and why we need them
Recording archive ↗Securing your Router with RPKI
Recording archive ↗RPKI Validation + BGP Workshop
Programme ↗Traffic Mining: Feel the packets, be the packets
Helped with a hands-on Tranalyzer traffic-mining workshop at the TurkuSec lab. A practical evening spent looking at real network traffic and what can be extracted from it.
Tranalyzer workshop archive ↗EVENTS Disobey · Helsinki · TurkuSec · Turku · Easterhegg · Vienna · GPN19 · Karlsruhe · BalCCon · Novi Sad · DENOG11 · Hamburg · Chaos Communication Camp · Mildenberg · 36C3 · Leipzig
2018
CHIX: a new Internet Exchange in Switzerland
Programme ↗EVENTS FOSDEM · Brussels · Disobey · Helsinki · Easterhegg · Würzburg · BalCCon · Novi Sad · 35C3 · Leipzig
2017
2016
RFC3021: Why aren’t we using it?
/31 point-to-point networks, sixteen years after the RFC already said we could stop wasting two addresses per link.
Slides ↗EVENTS BalCCon · Novi Sad · 33C3 · Hamburg
2015
South East Europe operator meeting
Meeting ↗EVENTS RIPE SEE 4 · Belgrade · Chaos Communication Camp · Mildenberg · BalCCon · Novi Sad · 32C3 · Hamburg
2014
BGP Routing Workshop
Programme ↗EVENTS BalCCon · Novi Sad · 31C3 · Hamburg
2013
2012
Easterhegg 2012
Worked as an Archangel during the event, helping keep the day-to-day operation of the Easter weekend moving.
Event ↗EVENTS Easterhegg · Basel · 29C3 · Hamburg
2011
RIPE meeting
Meeting ↗EVENTS RIPE 63 · Vienna · Chaos Communication Camp · Finowfurt · 28C3 · Berlin
2010
2009
2008
2007
SwiNOG and the provider community.
Already active around Swiss network operators while still early in my own systems-engineering career.
04 / BUILT / OPERATED
Things with packets, users, or consequences.
AS41051
FREETRANSIT
A non-commercial routing project giving students, enthusiasts and emerging networks a way to learn BGP and operate real Internet resources rather than only drawing them on a whiteboard.
freetransit.ch ↗AS58299
Service-provider backbone
International backbone, peering, transit, downstreams, address policy, datacenter connectivity, monitoring and the operational responsibility that comes with running a network other people depend on.
IXP
CH-IX
Founding and board involvement in a Swiss Internet exchange, with work around interconnection, community and getting the less-visible operational details done.
RIPE bio ↗AI / LOCAL
Self-hosted AI platform
Operated the local AI platform and model-serving infrastructure used for challenge environments, with a lot of time spent on integration, operations and adversarial testing.
SwiNOG40 ↗RESEARCH
Internet measurement support
Occasional infrastructure and production-routing support for Internet-measurement work, including a contribution acknowledged in an ACM IMC 2025 paper.
Paper ↗GLOBAL
Infrastructure consulting
Hands-on and advisory work for network operators, datacenter providers and large multinational organisations across Europe and beyond, from southern France through Central Europe, northern Norway and Sicily, plus intercontinental assignments. Client names are omitted where they do not need to become advertising.
SWINOG / OPERATOR COMMUNITYActive in the Swiss network-operator community since at least 2007; speaking at SwiNOG since at least 2016.
05 / ABOUT
About.
Systems engineering, network operations, teaching, startups and a long-running tendency to get involved when infrastructure gets complicated.
I started in systems engineering as an apprentice, then ended up building and operating service-provider infrastructure. I have run my own infrastructure businesses since 2009, operate AS58299, and spend a lot of my time on difficult routing, systems and delivery problems for organisations that already have competent technical teams.
I have also been around the startup scene since the late 2000s, helped early companies get infrastructure off the ground, and later taught in Swiss professional and higher technical IT education. Earlier and consulting work includes external systems engineering for a major international public-health organisation, hands-on Internet-exchange operations in South Asia, and infrastructure work for large multinational enterprises across Europe and beyond.
- 2004–2010
- Apprenticeship and early systems-engineering work; Swiss Federal Certificate of Proficiency in Computer Science completed in 2010.
- 2010s–present
- Teaching and mentoring in Swiss professional and higher technical IT education alongside engineering work.
- 2005–2012
- Systems, application and infrastructure roles in commercial and academic environments.
- 2009–present
- Founder / owner / principal infrastructure consultant, Openfactory.
- 2013–present
- Founder / owner, connectionpoint.
- 2020–present
- Finnish operations and cross-border infrastructure work.
- Education
- Swiss Federal Certificate of Proficiency in Computer Science, System Engineering at BBW Winterthur, 2010.
- Competitions
- Swiss Federal Championship in Computer Science: 3rd place System Engineering, 2007; 5th place, 2008.
- Languages
- German native · English fluent · French technical support · Finnish A2.2 and improving.
BGPIPv6RPKI / ROVASPAIS-ISOSPFMPLSEVPN / VXLANLinux / BSDProxmox / CephDatacenterCarrier EthernetLocal LLMIncident analysisTeaching
06 / CONTACT
Have a problem that survived the obvious answers?
I am happy to join as a consultant for a one-off problem, a second opinion, an escalation, or as a regular technical engagement alongside an existing team. I also speak at operator, security and hacker events, and I am happy to submit talks, workshops or CTF material. I am quite capable of noticing a CFP deadline too late, so if there is a topic you would like me to cover, send me the link or give me a nudge.
Email me ↗Also acceptable: asking how to connect a Boston Dynamics Spot to the Internet properly.