While assembling a new VPN concentrator for a private client last week, I headed to MikroTik’s download portal to fetch the latest long‑term RouterOS release. In the middle of skimming firmware changelogs, something unexpected appeared: a photograph of me—taken moments after I received my MikroTik Certified Instructor certificate during MUM 2013 in Venice—still proudly featured on the site more than a decade later.
My first reaction was equal parts surprise and quiet satisfaction. The tech world moves quickly; ten calendar pages in IT can feel like a century. That snapshot whisked me back to a conference room inside a hotel next to Mestre in Venice, where I had just wrapped up a workshop on QoS for Wifi using WMM, getting into the smaller details of it and emerged clutching a freshly signed trainer credential.
Yet the discovery also brought a gentle reality check. Success in engineering is rarely a solo act. Although the camera captured me holding a certificate, out of frame were the mentors who field‑tested my first BGP labs, the students whose questions sharpened my own understanding, and the colleagues who insisted every script be documented twice. Their fingerprints are on every project, and case study I have authored since.
Three Takeaways
- Legacy Matters—But Only If It Serves the Present
Nostalgia is pleasant, yet its value lies in informing today’s design choices. The RouterOS v5 scripts in the old days won’t run unedited on v7, but the design principles—clarity, modularity, ruthless testing—remain evergreen. - Community Is the Real Multiplier
That old photograph exists because someone at MikroTik thought the course worth documenting. A decade later I am still drawing on the same community for peer review, firmware insights, and, occasionally, a gentle reminder that an obscure may have different default values. - Humility Pairs Well with Pride
It’s tempting to frame that image as proof of unrivaled expertise. But the longer I stay in this industry, the clearer it becomes that curiosity outranks credentials. Technologies evolve; curiosity sustains.
Back to the present: the new concentrator is now humming in the lab, passing IPsec traffic at line rate and logging neatly to Graylog. Although my weekdays are spent knee‑deep in kilowatts and flyback converters—a power‑electronics playground I genuinely love—I still set aside time for select networking freelance projects; after all, once RouterOS gets into your bloodstream, it never really leaves. I am grateful to be part of a profession where a routine firmware hunt can double as a walk down memory lane—and where yesterday’s lessons quietly shape tomorrow’s solutions.
If you ever stumble upon an old photo of yourself in some forgotten corner of the internet, pause for a smile—then put the memory to work. The next generation of network engineers is already compiling our current best practices into their own origin stories.
Here’s to building secure tunnels—and to the enduring snapshots that remind us why we started.