# Alex Xu Senior Network Architect · Global Technical Lead CCIE #13192 — Routing & Switching · Security · Service Provider Shanghai, China · 200010 alex.xu@ccie13192.com · +86 189 6479 3933 GitHub: https://github.com/Alex13192 --- ## Profile Bilingual network architect with 23 years in carrier and enterprise networking. Started on national backbones — China Telecom CN2, the China Netcom northern core — and has moved through banking and telco in East Africa, HPC fabrics for genomic research, and now a global retail and logistics estate. Owns the whole path: architecture, delivery, and production support — including the incident calls that arrive outside business hours. The last five years have been dominated by transformation — legacy on-premise to hybrid cloud, MPLS to SD-WAN, and low-latency Ethernet for AI clusters — and by the automation that keeps those changes reversible. - 23+ years in networking - 3,000+ retail sites in a single global estate - 10+ data centres in scope --- ## Experience ### Global Technical Lead Engineer — Infosys Technologies *2024-06 — Present · Shanghai, China* - Own end-to-end network lifecycle for a global estate of 10+ data centres, 3,000+ retail stores, 60+ corporate offices and 65+ automated logistics and distribution centres — from architectural design to rapid incident response. - Engineered and optimised SD-WAN and secure edge connectivity across 3,000+ outlets and 60+ corporate hubs, holding a consistent security posture across widely differing regions. - Spearheaded the transition from legacy on-premise to a hybrid-cloud architecture on AWS, integrating AI infrastructure and low-latency switching for global business scale. ### Senior Network Architect — LVMH Group *2023-08 — 2024-06 · China* - Ran a global network transformation across 8 data centres and 2,000+ retail boutiques for multiple prestige brands in Greater China and APAC, unifying a fragmented, high-availability estate. - Led architectural design and deployment of Huawei Qiankun cloud-managed networking — centralised visibility, automated configuration and AI-driven troubleshooting for mass-scale distributed branches. - Consolidated separate brand infrastructures into one software-defined fabric: 25% lower operational overhead, 40% faster branch deployment. - Delivered SASE with cloud firewall, IPS and anti-DDoS, holding PCI DSS compliance across every point of sale. ### Senior Network Engineer — Pearson Educational Measurement *2013-08 — 2022-12 · China* - Full-lifecycle ownership of 16 enterprise data centres worldwide at 99.999% uptime for mission-critical learning and assessment platforms. - Engineered the resilient fabric behind 5,500+ Pearson VUE test centres — secure, low-latency connectivity for high-stakes digital examinations. - Managed 12 corporate offices across Greater China with SD-WAN and VPN for cross-border collaboration; led large-scale hardware refresh and firmware lifecycle across the global backbone. - Tier-3 escalation for complex global routing and switching faults, using packet analysis to hold strict SLAs for millions of users. ### Senior Network Engineer — China Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research *2011-09 — 2013-06 · China* - Sole point of contact for all network infrastructure across Greater China, covering NIBR Shanghai and the corporate headquarters. - Engineered VPLS backbones linking China to strategic data centres in Switzerland, Boston and Singapore, with BGP/MPLS traffic engineering for 24×7 research data synchronisation. - Maintained Arista and Cisco Nexus fabrics for HPC clusters at zero packet loss, and ran a 2,000-AP campus wireless estate. ### Senior Network Engineer — The Copy Cat Limited (Cisco Gold Partner) *2008-06 — 2011-07 · Kenya* - Banking — HA data centre architectures on Nexus (vPC, OTV) and ASR for Equity Bank, KCB, Standard Chartered and ABSA; DR over MPLS L2/L3 VPN; ASA/Firepower and ISE for NAC. - Carrier — Level-3 support and optimisation of IP/MPLS cores for Safaricom and Telkom Kenya, including large-scale BGP peering and IXP traffic engineering. - Critical infrastructure — hardened SCADA/EMS networks and Cisco Industrial Ethernet in substations for Kenya Power. ### Senior Network Engineer — Wafer (China) Network Systems (Cisco Gold Partner) *2005-08 — 2008-01 · China* - Deployed China Telecom CN2 with carrier-grade MPLS VPN and QoS; led the ATM/FR to IP/MPLS migration of the China Netcom northern backbone, with IS-IS and BGP optimisation across provincial nodes. - Designed China TieTong metro networks on 7600/12000 platforms, and delivered SONY China wireless at 3,000+ APs with redundant controllers. ### Network Consultant — Guangdong Esquel Textile Mill *2003-09 — 2005-08 · China* - Owned network and database security planning, delivery and ongoing management across the company and its branch offices. --- ## Selected Work ### Web products - **LLMention — GEO Scanner** — https://llmention-geo.com/ Forty published checks across twelve weighted dimensions: can AI crawlers reach, parse and cite a site? Every failing rule is named and linked to the fix. - **AgentBurn — The Agent Burn Index** — https://getagentburn.com/ An independent ledger of what AI agents cost to run: tokens per task and cost per solved task across thirty projects, in one comparable unit. - **Shotlingo** — https://shotlingo.cn/ One Chinese short-drama episode in; a localised scene-by-scene rewrite plus a 32-shot AI storyboard pack out, with cast anchors that hold for a season. - **NetKit — Network Engineering Toolkit** — https://netkit.ccie13192.com/ Twenty-four tools: subnet and VLSM, BGP aggregation, IPv6, DHCP, MTU overhead, PDU power, cabling. Local-first, zero network calls, nothing to upload. - **LLM Pricing & Context Calculator** — https://llm.ccie13192.com/ Per-token pricing and the real monthly bill across OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and DeepSeek, with cached-input rates and context-window utilisation. ### Mobile apps - **NetSmith — Network Tools for the Rack Aisle** — iOS · Android · one-time purchase · in App Store review Thirty-four network tools on the phone, running the same kernel as NetKit. - **HomeFlow — Remote Control for HomeKit** — iOS · App Store · 40 languages · live https://apps.apple.com/app/id6760010755 Air conditioners, smart lamps and speakers in one clean control surface: temperature and modes, colour and brightness, volume and playback — without opening four vendor apps. - **DawnMote — Habit Check-In** — iOS · App Store · in review A habit tracker built on one quiet idea: the daily check-in. Fewer settings, less gamification — just enough structure that the ritual survives a bad week. --- ## Technical Depth **Routing & Architecture** — BGP, OSPF, IS-IS, MPLS, SR-TE, SRv6, VXLAN/EVPN, Spine-Leaf, CLOS **AI & HPC Fabric** — Fat-Tree (Clos), Dragonfly, Rail-Optimised, NVLink scale-up, RoCEv2, PFC, ECN/DCQCN, Incast mitigation **Low Latency & Multicast** — Cut-through switching, PIM-SM/SSM, IGMP v2/v3, MSDP, deterministic latency **Security, Cloud & SD-WAN** — Cisco ASA/Firepower, Palo Alto, FortiGate, Check Point, Zscaler ZIA/ZPA/SSE, Cisco ISE, IPsec/DMVPN, SD-WAN, SASE, Huawei Qiankun, AWS hybrid cloud **Automation & Observability** — Python, Ansible, Nornir, Netmiko, Infoblox DDI, Splunk, Prometheus, Grafana, Zabbix, SolarWinds, Wireshark, NetFlow **Platforms** — Cisco IOS-XE/XR/NX-OS, ASR/7600/12000, Arista EOS, Juniper Junos, Huawei VRP, Cisco Industrial Ethernet --- ## Certifications & Education - CCIE #13192 — Routing & Switching · Cisco Systems · 2003 - CCIE #13192 — Security · Cisco Systems · 2005 - CCIE #13192 — Service Provider · Cisco Systems · 2009 - CCNP · CCNA · JNCIS · MCSE · 1999–2008 - Shanghai Normal University · 1999 — 2003 **Languages** — Chinese (Mandarin) · English (bilingual) --- ## Contact - Email: alex.xu@ccie13192.com - Phone: +86 189 6479 3933 - Location: Shanghai, China - PDF: https://ccie13192.com/alex-xu-resume.pdf ## Writing Working notes on routing, data-centre fabrics, AI-cluster networking and migrations: - [What a CCIE Number Does Not Tell You](https://ccie13192.com/notes/what-a-ccie-number-does-not-tell-you/) — What the CCIE lab measures, what it misses, and how I judge network engineering competence in interviews and on the job. - [Reading a BGP Looking Glass When a Prefix Disappears](https://ccie13192.com/notes/reading-a-bgp-looking-glass/) — A prefix vanishes, the looking glass shows nothing, and everyone assumes BGP is down. A working order for reading state codes, paths and policy. - [MPLS vs SRv6 for Operators: What Actually Changes](https://ccie13192.com/notes/mpls-vs-srv6-for-operators/) — MPLS and SRv6 compared by what changes in the data plane, what the migration really costs, and the runbooks a team has to rebuild. - [Lossless Ethernet for AI Clusters: PFC, ECN and the Failure Modes That Bite](https://ccie13192.com/notes/lossless-ethernet-for-ai-clusters/) — Why PFC, ECN and buffer sizing fail together in AI Ethernet fabrics, and the stall patterns that never show up as a packet drop. - [Why Spine-Leaf Broke the Three-Tier Model](https://ccie13192.com/notes/spine-leaf-broke-three-tier/) — Spine-leaf did not just replace a topology. It moved the L2/L3 boundary, split operations into underlay and overlay, and changed what you debug. - [Five SD-WAN Migration Failure Modes in the Real Network](https://ccie13192.com/notes/sd-wan-migration-failure-modes/) — Five places SD-WAN migrations break in production: centralised policy, asymmetric paths, app classification, DNS, and a rollback nobody tested. - [About the author](https://ccie13192.com/about/) - [Privacy policy](https://ccie13192.com/privacy/)