Etuate Cocker


Organization:	Exclusive Networks Pacific
Affiliation:	APNIC Community Trainer
Region:	Australia
Country:	New Zealand
LinkedIn:	Etuate Cocker

Biography edit

Dr. Etuate Cocker is originally from Tonga and was awarded the first PhD in Computer Science for the Kingdom of Tonga. While doing extensive research in the Pacific, he was awarded two grants (ISIF Asia and Internet NZ grants) and have attended a number of international and regional conferences. The results from his doctoral research have contributed to the development of Internet connectivity in the Pacific region. He has contributed to policy discussions in a number of ICANN meetings and he is passionate about improving connectivity for remote islands in the Pacific. His professional experience includes positions as an Instructor in many Cisco academies, Network Engineer, Technical Specialist, Researcher, Team Leader for a team of Network and Security Engineers at the largest Internet Service Provider in New Zealand - Spark NZ Ltd, Technical Engineer/Trainer, Security and Networks Consultant Manager for a Global distributor Exclusive Networks Pacific, Network Technical Lead - Architect, and currently the Head of Engineering Services - ANZ for Exclusive Networks Pacific. Etuate has authored/co-authored the following papers as part of his dissertation.

E. Cocker, U. Speidel, N. Rebenich, S. Neville, A. Gulliver, R. Eimann, K. Nisar, S. Hassan, Z. Azziz, M. Dong, and V. Wong, “Measurement of packet train arrival conditions in high latency networks,” in 9^th International Conference on Information, Communications and Signal Processing, Tainan, Tainwan, 10-13 December, p. P0190, 2013.
E. Cocker, F. Ghazzi, U. Speidel, “Measurement of buffer requirement trends for real-time traffic over TCP,” in 15^th International Conference on high performance switching and routing, Vancouver, Canada, 1-4 July.
U. Speidel, E. Cocker, P. Vingelmann, J. Heide, and M. Medard “Can network coding bridge the digital divide in the Pacific?,” in 15^th International Symposium on Network Coding, Sydney, Australia, 24-26 June 2015.
U. Speidel, L.Qian, E. Cocker, P. Vingelmann, J. Heide, and M. Medard “Can network coding mitigate queue oscillation on narrowband satellite links?,” in 15^th International Conference on Wireless and Satellite Systems, Bradford, Great Britain, 6-7 July 2015.
E. Cocker, U. Speidel, F.Ghazzi “Quality trend measurement of long-distance VoIP communication via estimated Mean Opinion Score (MOS),” in 10th International Conference on Information, Communications and Signal Processing (ICICS 2015), Singapore, 2-4 December 2015.
U. Speidel, E. Cocker, M. Medard, J. Heide, P. Vinglemann "Topologies for the Provision of Network-Coded Services via Shared Satellite Channels," in The Ninth International Conference on Advances in Satellite and Space Communications, Venice, Italy, 23-27 April 2017.

Employment edit

Etuate is currently the Head of Engineering Services - ANZ for Exclusive Networks Pacific. In his current role, he is responsible for managing a team of Support, Systems Engineers, and Security Consultants that provide vendor support, pre-Sales and post-Sales professional services for Exclusive Networks partners across New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific. He is also the Architecture of many Networks for Exclusive Networks partners where he redesign and implement many complex professional services.

Previously he was the Network Technical Lead - Architect for Datacom Systems where he manages one of the Professional Services teams at Datacom that engaged customers with the redesign and implementation of complex network security related projects. As part of this role he was responsible for developing the skillsets of Datacom's operational teams by training Engineers on many network security related topics. Prior to that Etuate was the Security and Networks Consultant Manager for Australia and New Zealand at Exclusive Networks Pacific where he managed a small team of Security and Network experts that assist customers with the redesign and deployment of Security vendor products. In addition, he also executed a number of Cyber Security workshops (Fortinet) for re-sellers and partners and was the Lead Architect responsible for resolving complex security and network related problems. Prior to Exclusive Networks he was the ICT Network Operation Center (NOC) Team Leader for New Zealand's biggest network (Spark). In this role, he manages Engineers that responds to Security threats as well as supporting the operational needs of major Banks, Enterprise, Corporate networks, Spark's own internal Enterprise network, Public Wifi as well as NZ Government institution networks. In essence, his team executes many changes across routing, switching, load balancers, DNS, firewall, and Wifi technologies.

As part of his community engagements, he is currently a Community Trainer for the Asia Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC) where he assists with the delivery of contents in their Information Security as well as Advanced Routing Security workshops. These workshops are designed to train Internet Service Provider (ISP) Network Engineers, Designers, Architects on current best practices in traffic engineering with the BGP protocol, Routing origin Authentication (RoA) and other advanced network-related topics. The courses are normally executed as part of regional network operator group meetings such as PacNOG.

Etuate currently holds 32 industry certifications on which the majority of the certifications were completed on his first year at Spark. He continuously work towards a number of industry certifications as part of his role at Exclusive Networks with the goal of bridging the gap between academia and the ICT industry.

Career/Education edit

In 2004, Etuate was awarded the New Zealand Regional Development Scholarship (NZRDS) in conjunction with the government of Tonga where he studied at the University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji for a Bachelor of Science majoring in Information Systems and Geography. He completed this degree in 2006 and graduated with BSc, Information Systems and Geography in 2007.

In 2007, he was awarded an Internship at the South Pacific Applied Geo-Science Commission (SOPAC) which was funded under the Tonga Government/European Development Fund. On this role, he was supervised by Dr. Wolf Forstreuter where they conducted extensive research on a method for extracting bathymetric data from satellite imagery. The result from their work contributed to the development of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) data in the Pacific.

Towards the end of his Internship in 2008, he applied for and was awarded the Australian Overseas Development Aid Scholarship (AUSAID ODA) under the open category. This scholarship was awarded in 2009 and it supported Etuate with his studies towards a Master of Science in Internet-working at the University of Technology (UTS) in Sydney, Australia. It was during his time at UTS, that Etuate was awarded another casual scholarship (UTS Dean's award) and the Faculty of Engineering and IT Cisco Academy scholarship to complete additional studies towards the Cisco Certified Academy Instructor (CCAI) program at UTS. In November 2009 he completed the CCAI program and became a part-time Lecturer at UTS. In addition, he also taught at the University of Auckland Cisco academy and was instrumental in the creation of the Cisco Academy at Unitec Institute in Auckland, New Zealand.

In 2010, he graduated with a MSc Internet-working from UTS and was also awarded the Australian Prime Minister's Pacific Award for completing his MSc degree with at least a Distinction grade (majority of completed courses were High Distinction). This award enabled Etuate to work in Australia for 3 months where he gained valuable industry experience at R2 Technology (Syscorp PTY) as well as contributing to the resolution of desktop and network related problems for small size businesses. While working in Australia, Etuate applied for a place to study towards a PhD in Computer Science at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He was awarded a place of study for the 2011 academic year but there was no support to fund his studies.

As part of the agreement he signed for accepting the AusAID and NZAID scholarships, graduates must return to their home country and contribute to the developments of the economy by applying the knowledge and skills they acquired from their studies. In August 2010, Etuate returned to Tonga where he was employed by the Tongan government as Systems Analyst for the Ministry of Lands, Survey and Natural Resources. While working in Tonga he applied for and was awarded the University of Auckland Doctoral scholarship under the Pasifika/Pacific category to further his studies towards a PhD at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. In addition, he also applied for and was awarded the Arthington Davy Scholarship which assisted him with acquiring experimental equipment required for his research. He started his PhD journey in February 2011 under the supervision of his primary supervisor Dr. Ulrich Speidel and secondary supervisor Associate Professor Dr. Nevil Brownlee. In early 2016, he successfully defended his thesis entitled: Active longitudinal measurement in global networks and goodput recovery with network coding over high latency satellite links. Later that year (July 2016) he became the first Tongan to graduate with a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Auckland.

Meetings edit

Etuate's interest on ICANN started at the time he was a first-year student at the University of Auckland. To date, he has attended the following ICANN meetings.

ICANN 47 - Durban, South Africa
ICANN 52 - Singapore
ICANN 53 - Argentina
ICANN 59 - Johannesburg, South Africa

In addition he has attended the following International conferences

APNIC 26 - Christchurch, New Zealand
APNIC 36 - Xian, China
APNIC 54 - Singapore

Industry Certifications edit

Started in 2010, Etuate excelled in a number of industry certifications which are documented on two links namely: