I'm Mark — an IT security and infrastructure leader in the Greater Chicago area. This domain is my home on the internet: part professional profile, part lab notebook, part hosting platform for community and hobby projects I support.
| netname | MARKVD-NET |
| person | Mark |
| aut-num | AS402766 |
| route | 204.238.17.0/24 |
| route6 | 2602:F340::/40 |
| amateur-radio | K9MEV · EN51uu |
| descr | IT security & infrastructure leadership |
| descr | Independent network operator & project host |
| country | US / Greater Chicago, IL |
| status | ACTIVE |
| remarks | Hosting tech, networking & amateur radio projects |
| mnt-by | MARKVD-NET |
I've spent 25+ years building and protecting enterprise technology — leading IT security and infrastructure teams across regulated life sciences manufacturing, federal government, and global education environments. My work sits at the intersection of security strategy, hands-on engineering, and business leadership: risk and compliance programs, incident response, network and datacenter architecture, and the people who make all of it run.
Outside of the day job, I'm an unapologetic infrastructure hobbyist. I operate my own independently registered internet number resources, hold an amateur radio license, run a home lab that has long since stopped being "home-sized," and lend hosting, networking, and security help to community projects — details on all of it below.
High-level areas where I've led teams and delivered results. (Details, references, and a full résumé available on request.)
Security programs, risk management, and compliance in regulated environments — frameworks like NIST CSF and ISO 27001, audits, and board-level reporting.
Networks, datacenters, cloud, and endpoint fleets — designed, modernized, and operated at scale for organizations that can't afford downtime.
Building and running detection and response capabilities, from security operations centers to tabletop exercises to the real thing at 2 a.m.
Practical security and infrastructure guidance for small and mid-sized businesses: assessments, hardening, incident recovery, and roadmaps that fit real budgets.
MARKVD-NET is a small autonomous system I operate personally — my own registered corner of the internet, used for learning, for self-hosting, and as the platform behind the community projects on this page.
| aut-num | AS402766 |
| route | 204.238.17.0/24 (IPv4 direct assignment) |
| route6 | 2602:F340::/40 (IPv6 allocation) |
| rpki | ROAs published — both prefixes RPKI-valid |
| peering | Multiple IPv4/IPv6 transit and peering sessions; peering inquiries welcome |
| geofeed | Greater Chicago, IL, US |
Licensed amateur radio operator in grid square EN51uu (Batavia, Illinois). Where RF meets IP: I operate HF through UHF, run local APRS infrastructure, and support the amateur radio community's presence on the internet.
Primary rig is a Yaesu FT-710 AESS covering 80m through 6m from home, feeding a Gap Challenger vertical and a G5RV. Lately most active on digital modes — primarily FT8 and JS8Call.
All HF contacts logged with N3FJP's Amateur Contact Log and uploaded to LoTW (my preferred QSL route), eQSL, and Clublog.
Most active locally on VHF/UHF voice — usually monitoring the Fox River Radio League repeaters (W9CEQ) and other popular local machines. Base station is a Yaesu FTM-400 on a well-elevated Comet GP6, with a TYT TH-9000D covering 1.25m and a Yaesu FT5D as the go-to handheld. DMR-capable too, via an Anytone AT-D878UVII Plus.
Mobile: a Yaesu FTM-300 in the vehicle, second band parked on APRS for road-trip tracking.
I run a local-coverage APRS digipeater [K9MEV-1] and igate [K9MEV-10] serving the general Batavia area — a Yaesu FT-2900 with an Argent Data OT2m tracker and a Raspberry Pi running Xastir, with home-built relay automation for remote management. Fairly active on APRS with several trackers in rotation.
Portable HF runs on a Yaesu FT-710 go-kit, Buddipole antenna, and a custom battery pack in a ammo-can case. A home-built uBITX transceiver occasionally makes it on the air as well.
On the receive side: a Diamond D3000N discone on a multicoupler feeding various scanners and receivers, plus a dedicated ADS-B receiver reporting to FlightAware.
| club | Fox River Radio League — member & webmaster, frrl.org |
| amprnet | Volunteer IP coordinator, Illinois allocation 44.72.0.0/16 — ardc.net |
| memberships | ARRL life member · AMSAT life member |
73 — hope to catch you on the air. QRZ lookups welcome at qrz.com/db/K9MEV.
The hobby side of the wire. Some of these have their own corners of this server; others live in the lab.
Web, DNS, mail, and services for this domain and friends' projects — because the best way to stay sharp is to run it yourself.
Bench projects, microcontrollers, sensors, and the occasional repair that turns into a rebuild.
Local weather sensing and data collection — instruments outside, dashboards inside.
Lab environments for testing tools, hardening techniques, and defenses before they ever touch production anywhere.
markvd.net is also home to a rotating set of community and hobby sites I support — amateur radio groups, technology projects, and other efforts that need a reliable place to live on the internet.
A free, public TWGS (TradeWars Game Server) instance keeping one of the great BBS-era games alive and playable. Telnet in and fly.
A bit of history: TradeWars traces back to the earliest days of dial-up bulletin boards, when Gary Martin — inspired by Chris Sherrick's original Trade Wars — began writing his own space-trading game in 1984. TradeWars 2002 v1.00 shipped in 1991 as a standalone door game that could run under nearly any BBS software, and it became a fixture of 1990s BBS culture: players hauling fuel ore, organics, and equipment between sectors, building planets, and ambushing each other in the depths of the galaxy. John Pritchett, who joined to squash bugs and went on to write v3, later acquired the rights and released the standalone TradeWars Game Server in 1998 — which is why the game outlived the BBS era itself and why you can still play it here today. PC World once ranked it among the ten greatest PC games ever made. Not bad for a door game.
The Fox River Radio League is our local amateur radio club, serving the Fox Valley area with the W9CEQ repeater system, license classes, public service events, and a great community of operators. I'm a member and have served as the club's webmaster for the past several years.
A tribute to the golden age of hauling CRT monitors into basements: the archived home of a long-running LAN party gaming group, preserved both in a modern format and in its original early-2000s glory.
If you're a project I host and need something, you know where to find me. If you're a small community project looking for a home, reach out — I occasionally take on new tenants.
For professional inquiries, consulting, hosted projects, peering, or just to talk shop about networks and radios:
| markvd@markvd.net | |
| radio | K9MEV — try the W9CEQ repeaters or APRS |
| remarks | Résumé, LinkedIn, and references available on request |