Network engineer · builder · Chicago
DUSTIN
ALLEMAN
Over a decade in networking and IT. Off the clock I build AI tools, automation, and a homelab that runs like production.
About
I'm Dustin. I've spent over a decade in IT: support, help desk, networking, engineering, infrastructure. It started long before the paycheck. I was the kid taking computers apart, downloading games and music, breaking things and figuring out how to fix them. Too many years of World of Warcraft, still a PC gamer. That curiosity turned into the career.
I did IT in the Marine Corps, carried it through a few companies after that, and these days I work on Cisco networking in a FedRAMP environment. I came up on the hands-on side: packet captures, escalations, enterprise gear. The goal was always to architect networks, not just support them, and to build the tools I wished I had along the way.
So I build. Dashboards, AI agents, automation, a homelab that grew from scavenged gear into something that runs like production. A lot of it points at one goal: moving into a sales engineer role, which is why so many of these projects are about proving a thing out and explaining it clearly. I also teach CCNA-level networking at colleges around Chicago, which is some of the most rewarding work I do.
Off the clock: Chicago lakefront skates, biking, anything outdoors, a Jeep with a permanent project list, and whatever the lab breaks that week.
Based in
Chicago, IL
Experience
10+ yrs networking & IT
Certifications
CCNA · CWNA · Meraki Solutions Specialist
Education
B.S. IT, Western Governors University
Teaching
Instructor, Cisco Networking Academy
Service
U.S. Marine Corps veteran
Featured projects
PocketOps for Twenty
LiveA free iPhone and iPad app for self-hosted Twenty CRM, live on the App Store. Your server, your API key, no middleman. Built alongside the full CRM buildouts I do for small businesses.
Homelab + Hybrid Cloud
LiveA production-grade homelab bridged to the cloud. Proxmox and two-site Cisco Meraki, full observability, automated backups, and a private overlay to Hetzner.
MindMap
LiveA self-hosted, white-label AI workspace. Every tool the agent touches becomes a node on a visual canvas, so you can see what it is doing and why. Plugin-based, fully tenant-isolated, now running real paying customers with a live marketplace, public docs, and a CRM that shapes itself to each business.
Design Lab
LiveEvery project needed a front end, so I got good at making them. The explorations, the rejects, a style engine that skins one page 32 ways, and the sites that shipped.
MadeForMeAI
LiveA multi-tenant AI workspace SaaS. Every customer gets their own isolated OpenClaw agent on its own Kubernetes pod, with single sign-on and billing wired end to end.
QuickIT Sales Automation
LiveInbound calls and chat to booked meetings, automatically. A phone number routes to an AI voice agent, into a CRM, onto a calendar, with no human in the loop for intake.
Solar Demo (TrueNorth)
DemoA full vertical demo for a solar installer: branded site, CRM, documentation, and a team of role-scoped AI agents handling intake, questions, and follow-up, end to end.
AI Agent Ecosystem
LiveA tiered team of AI agents that monitors and troubleshoots my cloud and local infrastructure, escalating from read-only log analysis to SSH to me. They now share one Git-backed memory brain across every machine, so a lesson learned on one box is known everywhere, and I can drive any of them from my phone.
Other projects
CCNP Study Bot + CML Lab
In ProgressA self-hosted study engine that drills me on the CCNP Automation blueprint, paired with a Cisco Modeling Labs environment and an automation workbench where the labs actually run. Built to turn a cert path into daily reps.
Games I keep starting
PlaygroundFive game projects in various states of done: a hex board game you can play in your browser, a first-person day at my desk, a co-op rack-install comedy, a capybara inspector, and inline-skating blobs. Two are playable right now.
Network Design & Architecture
ServiceNetworking is the foundation the rest of my work is built on: secure, segmented, well-documented design, a homelab that mirrors the enterprise, and a dedicated Cisco Modeling Labs environment for the heavy scenarios.
Media Stack
LiveA self-hosted media platform: Plex plus the full *arr automation stack and a request portal, so the whole library runs hands-off.
Packet Labs
LiveGuided packet analysis for ARP conflicts, RADIUS rejection, TCP connection failures, DNS, path MTU, and EAP-TLS. The useful learning material from NetAdminToolbox, rebuilt inside AllemanIT.
The Design Lab
Every project needed a front end. So I got good at making them.
14 sites shipped, 10 versions that lost, a style engine with 32 skins, and the process behind all of it.
Open the lab →Want to talk shop or hire me?
Call my AI line for a fun AI game to sign up. Just say "sign up" if you don't want to play. :)