Onno Stapper
What we are currently doing will have a huge impact on Amsterdam as an Internet Hub
Who is NL-ix?
Behind the world of the Internet, behind the world of fibers, protocols, peers and terabytes, are actual people making it all work. But who are these people? In other words: Who is NL-ix?
Today: š¤ Onno Stapper, Field Operations Leader
Iām Onno Stapper. Iāve been married for 32 years, have two grown-up sons and am looking forward to becoming a grandfather in January. I play the trumpet with the AMIGO stage band which is a lot of fun. I have also been making films of amateur performances like school musicals for a long time now (all the way back to VHS), working with a small team of volunteers and doing the directing, production and editing.
The Internet and I grew up together. In the late 1980s I started sending mail and running Telnet / FTP on Harris Computers with an Ethernet connection. It was all very insecure, and extremely slow, but there werenāt many risks as so few people were connected. Data volumes were also tiny then, just a few kilobytes. Now, thirty years on, Iām supervising the installation of new routers on the NL-ix core fabric with capacity of over 100 Terabit per second. The Internet has definitely grown up!
What we are currently doing will have a huge impact on Amsterdam as an Internet Hub
Onno Stapper
I started work in 1985 as an Electronics trainee at Harris Computers & Terminals where I became a Field Engineer. I repaired everything - computers, printers, tape-drives, paper-tape punchers and readers, terminals, and hard disks. In the old days a lot of electronics were too expensive to throw away, so we would go out and repair 40 MB hard drives as big as washing machines. I took evening classes in Business Administration in 2004/2005 and in 2006 I became Service Delivery Manager at Arcade ICT group (aka Arcade Networks). In 2008 I helped migrate the Digitenne ATM-over-Microwave broadcast network to SDH/Fiber which led to working with KPN for almost a decade on the Media Exchange Network roll-out.
In 2017 I moved on to NL-ix as Senior Network Engineer. I translated high-level network design into low-level detail; what to order, where to connect, when etc. I also overhauled the network maintenance and customer ticketing and communication processes, preparing to embed them to ISO 9001. In 2019 I became the Field Operations Lead. This involves managing all field operations tasks for the team. It doesnāt take too much of my time because the team is self-steering and knows exactly what to do with a few hints.
Tech is my passion, so I like working with all these geeky techies. And we do good work together. NL-ix is a bit nerdy, but itās also a fast-moving tech company where we create value for our customers based on our most important asset, the low-latency network. I am extremely proud of what we are currently doing with that network in Amsterdam, it will have a huge impact on Amsterdam as an Internet Hub.
Please contact Onno if you have any questions.
