Saud Asif

AT&T - New Jersey, USA 02/11 to present
Technical Director - Certification and Tier 4 Labs
• Successfully managed and certified Multicast VPN technology across all (CRS/GSR/7200) Cisco and Juniper (M320/T640) platforms.
• Mentored, motivated and developed a cohesive team of 5 certification engineers with vendor and platform independent skills set to help move around head count as and when project demanded.
• Defined AT&T labs strategy for multicast testing.
• Architected and evaluated AT&T MPLS network with Traffic Engineering.
• Provided strategic consultation to systems engineering organization on NGmvpn.
• Provided technical leadership during major network upgrades and worked closely with OPS tier2/3 staff during production outages.
• Conducted weekly meetings with Vendors to resolve issues. Negotiated SW features and bug-fix dates to ensure delivery dates align with AT&T's network deployment program.
• Launched a program to conduct Transfer-of-Information (TOI) sessions for lab and Ops teams to help them understand Multicast protocols and applications.
• Led test-set suppliers to develop products for evaluation of Next Generation of Multicast service (mvpn) based on BGP protocol.
• Increased quality of all vendor's software (IOS, IOS-XR & JunOS) by identifying and managing all high severity issues/blockers before production deployment.
• Provided strategic and technical direction to vendors (Cisco & Juniper) to develop large scale network setups for scale certification (C-SIM & LSNT)
• Worked closely with Vendor (Juniper) to improve their technical support structure and quality of support with specific step-by-step guidance and education.

AT&T AT&T - New Jersey, USA 05/99 - 02/11
Principle Technical Staff Member
• Played a pivotal role in the architecture and design validations of AT&T's Multicast network based on Rosen Draft (Anycast RP and MSDP)
• Worked beyond certification and actively worked on defining AT&T's requirement for NG Multicast technology based on test and production support experience.
• Identified and rectified wrong production configs on Cisco MSDP/RP and PE routers to avoid black hole scenarios.
• Regularly conducted Transfer-of-Information (TOI) sessions for AT&T's Lab/Tier4/Tier2 teams as well as Vendors (Cisco/Juniper) to explain AT&T's overall network design and functional components. TOI helped AT&T employees/contractors and also vendors to provide effective technical support in times of escalation and outages.
• Enhanced vendor's SW reliability by identifying many high severity bugs.
• Worked with AT&T research to port production tools to the Lab environment.
• Simulated large-scale customers in the test bed to evaluate network resources utilization & performance.
• Introduced the concept of negative testing in the labs. Successfully identified complex protocol issues in Cisco and Juniper software due to malformed packets.
• Successfully migrated BSR to Anycast and RP functionality from Avici to Cisco in production network.
• Certified the world's first commercial Cell based & Frame based IP MPLS VPN network.
• Developed strategy and test outline for flawless and smooth migration of customers from cell to frame based MPLS core with zero customer downtime.
• Authored and executed test plans for (BGP load Balancing, Qos, IGP LB, Route Reflector, CRS Multi-chassis etc.) features in AT&T's IP MPLS network.
• Certified all the IPFR/CBB projects (BPX/AXIS/RPMs/MGX/GSR/CRS/Juniper M320/T640 etc.)

Reuters Limited 09/93 - 03/99
Project Lead - Technical

• Designed a scalable TCP/IP network with Cisco 4000 series routers with EIGRP routing. Implemented Load balancing & route summarization.
• Managed production network as Tier 2 lead engineer. Reduced WAN bill by implementing Extended Access lists, filtering, customs queuing and priority list.
• Successfully managed production network and increased network performance and response time by 20% by route summarization and VLSM.

Datel, Inc. 08/92 - 11/93
Project Engineer
• Designed corporate X.25 Packet switching network of Habib (local) Bank with Cray 8000 switches & 8310 Asynch PADs.
• Designed and implemented a network for Deutsche Bank based on DCX MUX.
• Prepared tender document worth (USD 200 million) for Packet Switching Exchanges for state owned telecommunication company.