2000 – 2002
Riverstone Networks
Two years in Santa Clara, at the carrier and metropolitan-network edge.
The one chapter of this career set entirely outside Brazil. Riverstone Networks, a metropolitan-area-network equipment vendor based in Santa Clara, California, brought a move to the United States, first on an L-1 intracompany transfer and then, in 2001 and 2002, on an H-1B work visa. Riverstone had an unusual lineage of its own: originally a company called Yago, acquired by Cabletron around 1998, and re-emerged as an independent company through a spin-off in 2001. It was later acquired by Alcatel-Lucent in 2006.
Tier-III support and knowledge management
The role carried two titles across two years: product support engineer and knowledge-management coordinator. As a Tier-III technical-support specialist, the work was third-level escalation, recreating customer scenarios in the lab, regression testing, and bug verification. As knowledge-management coordinator, it was building and organizing the knowledge base the rest of support relied on, alongside product-marketing support and internal training. This was the deepest technical-support work of the career, at the level where the hardest problems escalate.
The metropolitan-network world
The technologies were the backbone of the early-2000s carrier and metro era: Gigabit Ethernet, MPLS, metropolitan-area switching and routing, and wide-area IP routing including BGP. Working at the vendor's third-level support meant seeing how these systems behaved at the edges, under the conditions that only surface in production at scale. It also delivered formal instruction: Riverstone concepts, features, and configuration training, and customer-support issue-identification and escalation-procedure training.
Clients named in the record
From the résumés of the time, in the capacity the résumé states. Names only.
- BT2000 to 2002, tier III product support
- Cox Communications2000 to 2002, tier III product support
- Verizon2000 to 2002, tier III product support
- Telseon2000 to 2002, tier III product support
- Terayon2000 to 2002, tier III product support
- MCI WorldCom2000 to 2002, tier III product support
- EarthLink2000 to 2002, tier III product support
- Korea Telecom2000 to 2002, tier III product support
- NTT2000 to 2002, tier III product support
- Telindus2000 to 2002, tier III product support
- Completel2000 to 2002, tier III product support
- Telefónica de España2000 to 2002, tier III product support
Sources: the résumé of 14 May 2008; read on 5 October 2026. Where two résumés disagree, the one written closest to the engagement is followed and the difference is noted on the name.
What it certified
Riverstone Certified Networking Professional (RCNP), 2001. United States educational-equivalency evaluation recognizing a background equivalent to a bachelor's degree in computer science and a bachelor's degree in business administration, completed in 2001 as part of the H-1B visa process.
The company was founded in 1996. This page covers only the years worked with it.