Network engineer, Chicago
DUSTIN
ALLEMAN
A decade of enterprise networking. I design it, run it, automate it, and build the tools and labs that prove it out.
How I work
Design it, run it, automate it, then explain it.
Ten years across help desk, network admin, enterprise support, and cloud-managed infrastructure. Routing, switching, and wireless at the packet level; containers, APIs, and automation on top. The last five years I have been the technical lead on Fortune 500 and federal agency networks, which means the job was never just the config: it was the root cause, the executive readout, and the runbook that kept it from happening twice.
Everything on allemanit.com is the proof: the homelab, the agents, the products, the labs.
What I work in
The short version. The long version is the rest of this site.
Routing & switching
BGP, OSPF, EIGRP, 802.1Q VLANs, STP/RSTP, EtherChannel, QoS, route redistribution
Wireless & WAN
Enterprise wireless design (CWNA), RF planning, SD-WAN, IPSec VPN, ISP redundancy and failover
Security & access
Segmentation, ACL and firewall policy, Zero Trust, 802.1X, SSO/identity, multi-vendor edge
Automation & platform
Python, REST APIs, Docker, Kubernetes, Proxmox, Traefik, Grafana, n8n
Operations
Incident triage, root cause analysis, Wireshark, syslog and SNMP, change management, runbooks
Platforms
Cisco IOS/IOS-XE and Meraki (MX/MS/MR), Juniper, Palo Alto, Fortinet, Azure, Proxmox, Linux
The road here
Marine Corps to enterprise networks to whatever the lab is breaking this week.
- 2013-2017U.S. Marine Corps, where it started
Cyber and network specialist. Learned to make mission-critical networks just work, under pressure.
- 2019CCNA and first network gig
Earned my CCNA at Mesa CC and moved into enterprise network admin at OneNeck across Cisco, Juniper, and Palo Alto.
- 2021Enterprise cloud networking
Moved into cloud-managed networking at scale: routing, switching, and wireless for enterprise customers.
- 2022High Touch and started teaching
White-glove Fortune 500 support, and I started teaching CCNA at City Colleges of Chicago. Instantly hooked on the teaching.
- 2023Federal networks
Technical lead for U.S. federal agency customers on a FedRAMP-authorized cloud platform. Compliance requirements on one side, mission uptime on the other.
- 2024-2025Build everything
A homelab that runs like production, AI agents, automation. If I could break it and learn it, I did.
- 2026What's next
CCNP in progress, degree wrapping in November, and looking for the seat where design, automation, and customer-facing work all count.
About
I'm Dustin. I've spent over a decade in IT: support, help desk, networking, engineering, infrastructure. It started long before the paycheck. I was the kid taking computers apart, breaking things and figuring out how to fix them. That curiosity turned into the career.
I did IT in the Marine Corps, carried it through a few companies after that, and these days I work on cloud-managed enterprise networking in a FedRAMP environment. I came up on the hands-on side: packet captures, escalations, enterprise gear. The goal was always to design and own networks, not just support them, and to build the tools I wished I had along the way.
So I build. Dashboards, AI agents, automation, a homelab that grew from scavenged gear into something that runs like production. A lot of it exists because I wanted the tool and nobody had made it yet, and because proving a thing out and explaining it clearly turns out to be most of the job. I also teach CCNA-level networking at colleges around Chicago, which is some of the most rewarding work I do.
Off the clock: Chicago lakefront skates, biking, anything outdoors, a Jeep with a permanent project list, and whatever the lab breaks that week.
Based in
Chicago, IL (remote)
Experience
10+ yrs networking, 5 in cloud-managed enterprise
Certifications
CCNA, CWNA, Meraki Specialist, CCNP (in progress)
Education
B.S. Business Management, WGU (Nov 2026)
Teaching
CCNA instructor, City Colleges of Chicago
Service
U.S. Marine Corps veteran
The work behind the resume
Every project, lab, and product on this site is mine, end to end.