Hello, my name is Mark. I’ve spent more time than I can remember working in the audio‑visual installation industry. I specialise in the marine variant — the big, rather expensive, and usually very white yachts.
Most days you’ll find me taming piles of cable and turning them into the central racks that run a vessel’s entire network: Wi‑Fi, security, communications, phones, and all the audio and video systems. That usually means several rack locations, plenty of Cisco networking gear, thousands of Cat cables to terminate, a bit of fibre to splice, and the occasional oversized coax to wrestle into place.
From new builds in Holland, Germany, and Italy to network upgrades in the USA and Spain, this role has taken me all over and taught me a huge range of skills. One thing was always certain: if I didn’t get that central system working, the boat didn’t leave. Simple as that.
I eventually stepped into the role of Senior Lead Engineer and delivered several 82‑metre‑plus yachts, directing onsite teams to build solid, dependable systems. With VSAT/5G/Starlink/OneWeb communications, Crestron NVX video distribution, Kaleidescape VOD, BSS/Dante audio distribution, Kerio firewalls, Cisco networks, and Crown amplification, there was always plenty going on.
These days, everything comes back to the network — the network is king. It’s always been the part that interests me most, installing large Cisco networks, terminating cabling, and troubleshooting issues at the physical layer. That’s my bread and butter.
But now it’s time to step out of that comfort zone and level up. I want to do more than set static IP addresses on installed equipment or fire off a few pings and traceroutes. I want to step fully into the network engineer role and put the cutters down.
This is the start of that journey.
mark tofton 
Leave a comment