Bob Stewart - Personal Origins

Birth to Employment

I was born 9 March 1948, named Robert LeRoy Stewart (answering to "Bob"), and grew up in Corunna, Michigan, a small town in the center of Michigan's lower peninsula, about half way between Flint and Lansing. I lived with Mom, Dad, two younger brothers, and three younger sisters. We were next door to Grandma and Grandpa Stewart and a loud shout from widowed Grandma Francis. Dad ran a shoe store. I shined shoes on the street starting when I was 10, then worked in the store from 12 years old until high-school graduation at 18.
Mom and Dad are healthy and active, living in Corunna.

Dad was born in Cookeville, Tennessee in 1925, son of William Hershal and Edna (Lewis) Stewart. He grew up in Tennessee and Florida and eventually ended up with his family in Corunna, Michigan. Grandpa Stewart was real important to me. He died at the age of 90 in 1986. I grew up as his shadow, tagging at his heels. Grandma Stewart, born in 1902, died in 1997. She passed to me a love of old-fashioned flowers.

Mom was born in Plymouth, Michigan in 1927, daughter of Arthur and Charlotte (Chalker) Francis. She grew up there, Alma, Michigan, and in Corunna. I barely knew Grandpa Francis, who died in 1952 of pancreatic cancer. Grandma Francis, born in 1902, died in 1997. Anyone who knew her saw a shining example of unconditional love, without demands.

I graduated from Rochester College (then Michigan Christian College) in Rochester, Michigan in 1968 with an Associate of Science degree and a wife. I went from there to University of Michigan in Ann Arbor where I dropped out in 1971 with a pretty good chunk of a degree in Computers and Communication Science.

Professional History

I got started in hi-tech as a time-sharing operator at Comshare in Ann Arbor, Michigan, May, 1969. I was an operator for nine months, during which I wrote software to make the operator's job easier. I particularly got noticed for writing a program to collect line usage statistics so the Operations Manager could tell if he needed new leased lines for our dial-in access network. I spent six years mostly doing such operations-oriented programming, including the design of the network management system for a distributed terminal network, about 1974 or so.

For part of 1975 I worked for Sycor in Ann Arbor. They made intelligent terminals. When I left they were trying to get a 5 megabyte hard disk working in an enclosure about the size of a small suitcase. Times have changed.

In April 1976 I moved my family to Massachusetts to work for Digital Equipment Corporation. I joined to design network management for DECnet. For a few years I was both architect and developer. I implemented parts of network management on RSX-11m through two development cycles. I was the network management architect for DECnet Phases II, III, and IV. I helped specify network management for Ethernet Version 2, and designed the Ethernet loopback protocol. After six years I burned out on network management and moved into Advanced Development, where I was on the project that defined bridges. I wrote the first bridge architecture specification and made the first presentation to IEEE 802 in early 1984, at the same meeting where IBM presented source-route bridging.

During my last several months at Digital and then full-time for most of 1984 I was a principle in Carousel Software,a home-computer educational software company. Our products for the Atari 8-bit and Commodore 64 computers were published by Fisher Price, Atari, and Coleco. We quit while we still had our shirts.

In November, 1984 I went to work for an old friend at Xyplex who was making terminal servers for DEC VAXes. I was the fifth engineer, counting him. Over the years there I implemented and designed protocols and network management in the VAX and in their embedded system. About 1989 I began to get interested in TCP/IP. I got involved with SNMP, got on the Internet, and at my first IETF meeting I chaired two working groups. I stayed heavily involved in SNMP and ended up as SNMPv2 working group chair and on the Network Management Directorate.

In August, 1994 I joined Cisco Systems as a full-time telecommuter, working in Network Management, doing SNMP MIB design and implementation, internal consulting, and more