About
Cody Oncken
Network System Administrator at Marion ISD. I think a network should be explainable — every VLAN, every rule, every route, in a document someone else can follow.
- Role
- Network System Administrator
- District
- Marion ISD
- Based in
- Cibolo, Texas
- cody@oncken.dev
What I do
I designed the district's addressing and VLAN plan from the ground up, and I maintain everything that sits on it: switching, wireless, firewalls, Windows Server and Active Directory, Google Workspace, filtering, and backups. The title says network; the job is the whole stack.
Before this I studied computer science at UTSA. The degree taught me to read a specification, and the job taught me that a design nobody can explain is a design the next person will undo.
Where I have been
-
2023 — present
Network System Administrator · Marion ISD
Marion is a small team, so the job is the whole stack. I designed the district's addressing plan and VLAN architecture from the ground up — 113 networks, one scheme — rebuilt the switching and wireless stack on UniFi, and wrote the firewall policy that governs what may talk to what.
The rest of it is mine too: Windows Server and Active Directory, Google Workspace for Education, the Linux services in between, backups, filtering, endpoint security, cameras, phones, and the vendors behind all of them. I also lead the help desk and its technicians, which is how I hear about every design decision that did not survive contact with a classroom.
-
Spring 2021
UI/UX Project Manager · Circle Mental Wellness
Ran UI/UX delivery for an early-stage mental wellness platform: requirements, scope, timelines, wireframes, and the documentation the development team worked from.
-
2018 — 2022
B.S. Computer Science · University of Texas at San Antonio
B.S. Computer Science. Networking, operating systems, databases, and software engineering — and the habit of reading the specification instead of the summary.
Toolkit
Networking
- TCP/IP
- VLANs & 802.1Q
- STP
- Routing
- DNS
- DHCP
- 802.1X
Platforms
- UniFi
- Cisco
- Meraki
- Cambium
- WatchGuard
- Windows Server 2022
- Active Directory
- Google Workspace
- Linux
- Proxmox
Languages
- Python
- Bash
- PowerShell
- Go
- Rust
- C
- JavaScript
- SQL
Security & physical
- Firewall policy
- EDR
- Axis
- Verkada
- Panasonic
- DNAFusion
- Raptor
Certifications
- CompTIA Network+Certified
- CompTIA Security+In progress
Elsewhere
The writing here is the main thing: field notes on switching, wireless, segmentation, and operations, written at three levels so a beginner and a senior engineer can both use them. If something here saved you an afternoon, tell me — I like hearing which article found someone at 07:00.