Brad Cowie
Research Programmer at WAND Group, University of Waikato
New Zealand
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolBrad Cowie is a Research Programmer with 14 years' experience in systems administration, automation, monitoring and Software Defined Networking (SDN), leading the open-source FAUCET OpenFlow controller project from the University of Waikato. He blends hands-on back-end and DevOps engineering—improving controller reliability, test suites and packaging—with real-world production deployments and fleet automation using Puppet and Ansible. A long-term contributor to the Ryu SDN framework, he has fixed deep module/import issues and strengthened security by enabling configurable ciphers and Python compatibility tweaks. Comfortable across low-level networking, embedded systems and orchestration, he also advises and delivers on bespoke systems for research and industry. Based in New Zealand, he pairs academic-rooted research work with practical, production-grade engineering and a taste for mentoring student projects.
13 years of coding experience
2 years of employment as a software developer
BCMS (Hons) Computer Science, BCMS (Hons) Computer Science at The University of WaikatoBethlehem College
Github Skills (15)
technical-writing10
openflow10
openvswitch10
unit-testing10
docker10
python10
dockers10
networking10
sdn10
documentation10
ryu10
testing10
cicd9
ssl9
yaml8
Programming languages (18)
Github contributions (5)
faucetsdn/faucet
May 2016 - Jan 2023
FAUCET is an OpenFlow controller for multi table OpenFlow 1.3 switches, that implements layer 2 switching, VLANs, ACLs, and layer 3 IPv4 and IPv6 routing.
Role in this project:
Back-end & DevOps Engineer
Back-end & DevOps EngineerContributions:10 releases, 390 reviews, 1181 commits in 6 years 8 months
Contributions summary:Brad primarily focused on improving the Faucet OpenFlow controller, a project focused on Software Defined Networking (SDN). Their contributions included bug fixes related to configuration defaults and handling of unexpected port events. They also enhanced the test suite with improvements to exception handling, more robust tests with bad JSON replies and added a cleanup mode for unit tests. Furthermore, the user added instructions on installing Faucet with Docker and reorganized the project's codebase for easier packaging and maintenance.
faucet-sdncontrolleripv4sdn-controllersdn
faucetsdn/ryu
May 2017 - Sep 2020
Ryu component-based software defined networking framework
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:3 reviews, 24 commits, 22 PRs in 3 years 5 months
Contributions summary:Brad primarily contributed to the Ryu SDN framework by addressing several issues related to module importing and security. They fixed a bug in the module import mechanism, updated URLs and documentation, and made changes to how the project handles Python versions and eventlet bugs. The user also added the ability to configure ciphers for enhanced security.
component-baseddefinednetworkingsoftware-defined-networkingnetwork
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