This was my first technical job interview after leaving the U.S. Army.
The interview was for a role with Champion Holdings, which had acquired and was operating the former AlphaStar direct-to-home satellite earth station as Champion International Teleport. The facility is located in Oxford, Connecticut.
The site had been purchased by Egyptian businessman Mahmoud Wahba and retained extensive broadcast-era infrastructure, including multiple satellite dishes, dedicated fiber connectivity, and full satellite uplink and downlink capabilities.
One of the advantages of the facility was its network reach, including forty-eight strands of dark fiber linking the site directly to 60 Hudson Street in New York City. Sixty Hudson Street is a major telecommunications interconnection point where long-haul fiber networks and service providers physically connect and exchange traffic.
This took place in 1999, when internet video streaming was still new and broadband access was only beginning to be rolled out. Many technologies that later became standard were still experimental, and much of the work focused on understanding what was technically possible.
As with many early-stage startups, the environment offered broad exposure to systems and responsibilities, which created both opportunity and uncertainty.
Unicast video streaming was already functioning when I arrived.
The next objective was to enable multicast delivery so that multiple receivers on the local network could consume the same video stream efficiently.
The multicast traffic was intended to remain local to the facility and was not designed for wide-area or internet-routed delivery.
At the time, I had no prior experience working with video streaming technologies.
There was no formal troubleshooting exercise or technical test. The video stream came up naturally during conversation as we walked through the facility and discussed what the system was expected to do.
Because unicast streaming was already operational, I focused on understanding what changed when multicast was introduced.
I approached the system as I would any unfamiliar environment:
Rather than treating the issue as complex, I treated it as a local network behavior that needed to be walked end to end.
I relied on the vendor documentation and followed the configuration steps as written.
Local routers and switches were configured to allow multicast traffic to pass correctly. Once the configuration aligned with the documented model, receivers were able to join the multicast group.
The video stream appeared immediately.
At the time, I did not view this as a notable accomplishment. I had never worked with video streaming before and assumed the system would behave as documented once configured correctly.
After I was hired, we explored whether multicast delivery could function beyond the local network.
At one point, the network provider stated that multicast was enabled on upstream equipment and that the stream could be viewed several states away.
I did not have direct visibility into that portion of the network, nor did I communicate directly with the upstream engineer making the claim.
Because multicast traffic requires every router and switch in the path to explicitly allow it to pass, I was unable to independently verify the behavior from home. Although I had broadband internet access, I did not have control over the intermediate network equipment, making end-to-end verification unlikely.
For that reason, I treated the claim cautiously and focused on what could be directly observed and reproduced within the local environment.
Later, Dave Shugarts, the earth station manager at the time, mentioned that a consultant had previously attempted to enable multicast and had been unsuccessful.
I had not known this during the interview, and it did not influence how I approached the system.
This experience reinforced an approach that has remained consistent throughout my career:
In unfamiliar systems, particularly early-stage environments combining legacy infrastructure with new ideas, progress often comes from slowing down and aligning behavior with documented expectations.
Dave Shugarts, the earth station manager at the time, later passed away. I remain grateful for his professionalism and for the opportunity to learn in that environment.