Curriculum Vitae for Lorenzo Colitti

Overview

I am a networking specialist with a Ph.D in network management, topology discovery, visualisation, and measurement. My background combines methodological and theoretical problem analysis skills learned in academia with thorough technical knowledge of networks and systems from my research and my experience as a system architect and administrator. I am looking for a position where I can apply these skills to challenging and varied problems in a stimulating environment while delivering products and services that will be used in the real world, thus combining the intellectual statisfaction of academia with that of seeing my work reach the hands of users.

Personal information

Place and date of birth	Rome, 24/06/1976
Nationality	Italian and British citizenship
Current address	日本東京都港区西新橋3-20-1
Mobile	+1-415-203-7941
E-mail	lorenzo@colitti.com
Languages known	Italian (native), English (native), Dutch: (fluent, NT2 level)

Employment experience

2006—present: Network Engineer, Google

I am currently working on IPv6 and its adoption both inside Google and in the Internet at large. I was one of the founders of the IPv6 team and am currently the tech lead. In 2009, together with Erik Kline, I was awarded the initial Itojun Service Award by the Internet Society. In 2011, I helped organize World IPv6 Day.

2003—2006: Network Engineer, RIPE NCC

From 2003 to 2006, in parallel with my Ph.D, I worked in the New Projects group at RIPE NCC in Amsterdam, first as an intern and then as an full-time employee. I worked on the Routing Information Service, where I improved support for IPv6 and 32-bit AS numbers and integrating the BGPlay system for graphical visualization of updates. I also evaluated the effects of anycast on the K-root DNS server.

2000–2002: System and network administrator, xmedia Srl

From 2000 to 2002, in parallel with my master’s degree, I worked as a system and network administrator at xmedia, one of the first web agencies in Italy (since dissolved). As part of a team of two, I defined and implemented routing, security, firewalling, backup, and monitoring policies, and administered the company's network, Linux/Solaris servers (~60 users, ~20 servers) and databases. I also designed and implemented the company's Linux-based web hosting platform and virtual domain email service.

Education

2002–2006	Ph.D in Networking, Roma Tre University
1995–2002	Roma Tre University (Rome): Laurea (equiv. to M. Sc.) in Electronic Engineering: 110/110 cum laude
1990–1995	Liceo classico F. Vivona (Rome): Maturità classica (secondary school diploma in classical studies): 60/60
1984–1990	St. George's English School (Rome, Italy)
1984:	Abinger Common Elementary School (Surrey, United Kingdom)

Ph.D in Networking

I was awarded a fellowship for a doctoral programme at Roma Tre University in November 2002 and obtained a Ph.D on April 6 2006. My Ph.D thesis, Internet Topology Discovery Using Active Probing, can be found online.

Research interests

During my Ph.D I carried out research on the following topics:

IPv6-in-IPv4 tunnel discovery methodologies, their application to the current IPv6 Internet, and the impact of tunnels on the global network.
BGPlay, a system for visualising routing changes in the IPv4 and IPv6 Internet.
Active BGP probing methodologies for interdomain topology discovery by manipulating routing announcements.
Evaluating the effects of anycast on DNS root name servers.

Involvement in the 6net project

As the University's contact person for the EU-funded project 6net, I was involved both in project accounting and work package meetings and in technical work. Non-research contributions include implementing IPv6 support MRTG and IPv6 support for BGPlay.

Publications

L. Colitti, G. Di Battista, and M. Patrignani, Discovering IPv6-in-IPv4 tunnels in the Internet, in Proc. IEEE/IFIP NOMS 2004, April 2004. Winner of the Best Student Paper prize. [pdf]
L. Colitti, G. Di Battista, and M. Patrignani, IPv6-in-IPv4 tunnel discovery: methods and experimental results, IEEE eTransactions on Network and Service Management (eTNSM), vol. 1, no. 1, p. 2-10, April 2004. [pdf]
L. Colitti, G. Di Battista, F. Mariani, M. Patrignani and M. Pizzonia, Visualizing Interdomain Routing with BGPlay, in Journal of Graph Algorithms and Applications, Special Issue on the 2003 Symposium on Graph Drawing, GD '03. Vol. 9, no. 1, p. 117-148, 2005. [pdf]
L. Colitti, Analyzing and improving GNOME startup time, in Proc. SANE 2006, May 2006. [pdf]
L. Colitti, G. Di Battista, M. Patrignani, M. Pizzonia and M. Rimondini, Investigating Prefix Propagation through Active BGP Probing, in Proceedings of IEEE ISCC 2006. Winner of one of the two Best Student Paper prizes. [pdf]
L. Colitti, E. Romijn, H. Uijterwaal and A. Robachevsky, Effects of anycast on DNS root name servers, technical report RIPE-393.

Teaching

Enterasys Specialist Switching courses on routing support in the N and E series (2006).
Interdomain Routing (BGP configuration, policies, registries) course for Telecom Italia Learning Services. (2004)
IPv6 tutorials for the users of the Italian research network GARR and for master students. (2002—2003)

Awards

My NOMS 2004 paper won the Best Student Paper prize among ~60 presented papers.
My ISCC 2006 paper won one of the two Best Student Paper prizes among ~150 presented papers.

Master’s Degree

From 1995 to 2002 I read Electronics Engineering at Roma Tre University in Rome, obtaining a Laurea (equivalent to M. Sc.) with a final mark of 110/110 cum laude. My thesis [pdf] was on the study of methodologies for the automatic discovery of network topology in mixed IPv6-IPv4 networks. Other University projects include:

Implementation and management of the university's IPv6 network. (2001—)
Partial implementation under Linux of the draft IETF IP-version independent MIB (2002) in net-snmp.
Design and implementation of a generic framework for distributed computing in Java and RMI and application of the system to distributed calculation of fractals (2000).
Design and C++ implementation of a web application for the graphical comparison of telephone call prices (2000).
Analysis of the University WAN network: topology, protocols, and performance (1998).

Google Summer of Code Project

I participated in the 2005 Google Summer of Code project, working with the GNOME foundation on improving GNOME login time. Many in the GNOME community appreciated my work. A full report is available on the GNOME web site.

Non-professional Experience

BBS Management

From 1996 to its shutdown in 1998 I was involved in the management of the largest amateur BBS in Rome, Antanisoft Group Research, with hundreds of users. Together with the BBS's founder I implemented a series of support programs, including a watchdog that guaranteed the operation of the BBS 24 hours a day.

Involvement in open-source projects

Since 2001 I have been contributing to the Mozilla project, which created the Firefox and Thunderbird applications. My contributions to the project include IMAP quota support, IPv6 improvements, improvements to the spam filter, and miscellaneous bug fixes and QA. I am one of the developers of the Flashblock extension for Firefox.

In 2001 I added OAM cell support to the Linux kernel driver for the Alcatel SpeedTouch USB ADSL modem to enable interoperability with Cisco routers with the oam-pvc manage setting. I have also contributed code and bug fixes to various open-source applications including quagga, Net-SNMP, User-Mode Linux, wpa_supplicant, and Software Suspend 2.

Hobbies

Photography, film, languages, travelling, cooking.

References

Giuseppe Di Battista
Professor, Roma Tre University
gdb at dia.uniroma3.it

Daniel Karrenberg
Chief Scientist, RIPE NCC
dfk at ripe.net

Last updated: Tue Apr 3 2012
The latest version will always be available online.