Florian Deragisch, CCIE #47970, is a Technical Leader, working with large service provider and carrier-grade enterprise customers. He joined Cisco in 2012 as part of a graduate program, where he discovered his passion for service provider designs and technologies. After gaining extensive exposure to MPLS-based networks and services, he embraced the evolution toward segment routing with his first SR-MPLS deployment in 2018. More recently, he has focused on the migration and deployment of L2VPN/L3VPN SRv6 services to build simple and highly scalable network architectures. He holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering and information technology from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and a Cisco Internetwork Expert certification (CCIE #47970). When not busy with work, he enjoys traveling to explore new places, cultures, and food. Leonir Hoxha, CCIE #49534, has been with Cisco Systems since 2013, taking on various roles on the Professional Services team and later on the Pre-sales team--from troubleshooting to designing and implementing large-scale networks with a focus on service provider technologies, specifically MPLS services. In his current role as a Solutions Architect, he supports service providers and enterprise customers by understanding their requirements and providing cutting-edge solutions. An active speaker at Cisco Live conferences, he has delivered numerous sessions on segment routing across Europe, the United States, and Australia. He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science and a Cisco Internetwork Expert certification (CCIE #49534). In his free time, he enjoys electronic music, a nod to his first job as a DJ during his teenage years. Rene Minder, CCIE #8003, is a Senior Program Advisor and Solution Architect with over 25 years of experience in the IT industry. He has been responsible for architecture and delivery in more than 70 customer engagements, evolving their networks and management infrastructures as well as the processes for developing, testing, and deploying them. He has led end-to-end IT architecture projects encompassing everything from portals offering service self-administration capabilities, to IT applications that automatically configure and test changes, to invoicing. His efforts have led to significant improvements in customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, and overall agility. He holds Lifetime Emeritus status for his Cisco Internetwork Expert certification (CCIE #8003). Matthys “Thys” Rabe, CCIE #4237, a Lifetime Emeritus Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE #4237), is a Technical Leader at Cisco Systems and holds a diploma in electrical engineering (telecommunications). With more than 25 years of experience in IP and MPLS operations with various service providers in South Africa and Switzerland, he has spent the past 10 years as a Technical Support Engineer focused on Swisscom. Prior to working at Cisco Systems, he was part of the Core IP Engineering team with a Swissbased mobile provider. When he’s not working, he enjoys fishing with his brothers in various southern African countries. Kateel Vijayananda, is a solutions architect at Cisco Systems and has more than 30 years of experience in the networking industry. His expertise includes IPv6, IP services, design of large-scale networks for enterprise and service provider customers, and QoS assurance in IP networks. He has been with Cisco Systems since 2001, involved in several projects for service providers to deploy IP-based services using MPLS and segment routing. Before joining Cisco, he worked at Swisscom, a service provider in Switzerland, where he was responsible for developing MPLS VPN services. He is the co-author of the book Developing IP-Based Services: Solutions for Service Providers and Vendors. He holds a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Maryland at College Park and a PhD in computer science from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne (EPFL). In his spare time, he enjoys traveling and cooking.
