About Benson

Benson Smiling

Profile

Benson Schliesser is an Internet and network technology subject matter expert. He has over 15 years of professional experience, much of that spent designing, deploying, and operating infrastructure for network and datacenter service providers.

Currently, Benson is a Principal Engineer at Cisco Systems, Inc. where he is part of the Service Provider Technology Architecture team. His work is focused on Internet technologies overall, specifically SDN architectures and datacenter networking, as well as next-generation service provider networks, IPv6 transition, and future network architectures. Benson is also interested in the development of IPv4 address markets, Internet governance, and inter-domain routing in the global Internet. He co-chairs the IETF NVO3 and ARMD working groups, is a member of the IETF Operations Directorate, and contributes to various other IETF working groups. Benson is a member of the IEEE Communications Society and IEEE Standards Association, and is a voting member of the IEEE ICWG / P2302 working group. He also participates in policy discussion in ARIN. And he is a member of NANOG and the Internet Society.

Prior to Cisco, Benson was Technical Vice President in the Office of the CTO at Savvis, Inc. where he was responsible for network architecture and technology, providing strategy planning, product portfolio leadership, new technology evaluation, and M&A support.  Before joining Savvis, he held positions in software development, network engineering, and systems administration. His career began during high school in the mid-’90s when he co- founded an Internet Service Provider to serve his local community. Benson went on to provide systems administration for several university labs while attending the University of Missouri – St. Louis, and then network engineering and software development for a regional Internet Services Provider.

Employment History

  • Principal Engineer, Cisco Systems, Inc. 2010-Present
  • Technical Vice President, Savvis, Inc. 2006-2010
  • Senior Network Technologist, Savvis, Inc. 2004-2006
  • Director of R&D, Savvis, Inc. 2001-2004
  • Senior Network Engineer, Savvis, Inc. 1999-2001
  • Senior Systems Engineer, Savvis, Inc. 1999
  • Systems Programmer, InLink Comm. 1998-1999
  • Web Programmer, InLink Comm. 1998
  • Senior Support Engineer, InLink Comm. 1998
  • Systems Administrator, UMSL 1997-1998
  • Network Systems Engineer, BPC Internet 1995-1997

Notable Projects

Highlight projects from Benson’s career include:

  • the architecture, development, and design of Savvis’ next-generation cloud network
  • the architecture and design of Savvis’ global QoS-enabled MPLS network (NGN)
  • the architecture and design of Savvis’ Hosting Area Network (HAN) datacenter network
  • the design and implementation of Savvis’ Intelligent IP Layer-3 VPN network
  • the development and implementation of InLink Communications’ back-office Operations, Support, & Billing system
  • the complete implementation of BPC Internet’s dial-up Internet access platform and supporting services

Publications & Works in Progress

  • S. Barber, O. Delong, C. Grundemann, V. Kuarsingh, & B. Schliesser, “ARIN Draft Policy 2011-5: Shared Transition Space”, Work In Progress, IETF Internet-Draft draft-bdgks-arin-shared-transition-space-03, September 2011.
  • B. Schliesser & T. Nadeau, “Definition of Textual Conventions for Virtual Private Network (VPN) Management”, IETF RFC 4265, November 2005.

Public Presentations & Panels

  • B. Schliesser (moderator), “Track: ARMD”, NANOG 52 Conference, June 2011.
  • B. Lozano, B. Schliesser & S. Mandava, “Enterprise Use-Case Roundtable”, CloudCamp St. Louis Conference, December 2009.
  • M. Morrow, B. Schliesser, et al., “Panel: Emerging Technologies and Business Architectural Impact”, MPLS 2009 Conference, October 2009.

Old & Expired Drafts

  • B. Schliesser & L. Dunbar, “ARMD Call for Investigation”, IETF Internet-Draft (expired) draft-ietf-armd-call-for-investigation-00, May 2011.
  • L. Dunbar, S. Hares, M. Sridharan, N. Venkataramaiah & B. Schliesser, “Address Resolution for Large Data Center Problem Statement”, IETF Internet-Draft (expired) draft-dunbar-armd-problem-statement-01, March 2011.
  • S. Hares, P. Muley, K. Patel, L. Fang, B. Schliesser & N. Bitar, “Co-operative Route Filtering capability for BGP-4”, IETF Internet-Draft (expired) draft-muley-idr-orf-order-02, October 2005.
  • J. Laria, E. Stelzer, S. Hancock & B. Schliesser, “Virtual Router Management Information Base Using SMIv2”, IETF Internet-Draft (expired) draft-ietf-l3vpn-vr-mib-04, July 2005.
  • A. Nagarajan, J. Sumimoto, M. Suzuki, P. Knight & B. Schliesser, “Applicability Statement for Virtual Router-based Layer 3 PPVPN Approaches”, IETF Internet-Draft (expired) draft-ietf-l3vpn-as-vr-01, February 2004.

Memberships and Other Experience

  • Co-chair, IETF NVO3 Working Gropu – 2012-Present
  • Participant, Open Networking Foundation – 2011-Present
  • Co-chair, IETF ARMD Working Group – 2011-Present
  • Member, IETF Operations Directorate – 2011-Present
  • Voting Member, IEEE P2302 Working Group – 2011-Present
  • Organizer, St. Louis Cloud Computing Users Group – 2009-2010
  • Organizer, CloudCamp St. Louis – 2009
  • Member, BIND Forum – 2009-Present
  • Participant, LISP Beta Network research project – 2008-2010
  • Field Assistant, Galapagos Islands, Oxford University Centre for the Environment – 2007
  • Policy Development Participant, ARIN – 2006-Present
  • Member, IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc) – 2005-Present
  • Participant, NANOG – 2000-Present
  • Participant, IETF, multiple working groups – 2000-Present
  • Member, Internet Society (ISOC) – 1999-Present
  • Member & Volunteer, St. Louis Unix Users Group – 1998-1999
  • Student Member, Waterloo, IL School District, Technology Planning Committee – 1994-1996

Benson Pointing