Informal Biography

An ex-compiler writer, real-time kernel hack, and a software engineering manager, I have over 50 years in the computer industry. I have been a user and occasional implementer of networking from the ARPANET to the current day Internet. I architect and design protocols, obsess about security, measure and redesign routing, and try to promote rigor and simplicity in the Internet.

Present Work

• I am a Fellow at Arrcus, Inc., vendor of a complete routing stack.

• I am also a Research Fellow at Internet Initiative Japan Research Lab, an academic lab attached to Japan's oldest commercial ISP, where I do routing research, Internet measurement, and security. See Publications

• Thanks to the generosity of Cisco, Equinix, Google, Juniper, NTT, SprintLink, et alia, I am lead maintainer and cat herder of an informal research laboratory of three PoPs with routers, servers, clusters, etc. to facilitate premissionless research.

Recent Past (last two decades out of five)

• Through Dragon Research Labs, I worked on routing security protocol design and implementation, mainly the RPKI and Origin Validation,

• Also through Dragon Research Labs, I spent a few years as chief cat herder for the CrypTech Project, an open source HSM design effort.

• I have been involved for over 30 years with the deployment and integration of appropriate networking technology in the developing world. I was founder and an original PI for the Network Startup Resource Center, originally an NSF sponsored pro bono effort. I gave a speech on my motivations at Rhodes University in April 2002. But I am very sceptical of technocolonialism.

• I gained considerable network operational and network automation experience as as the founding engineer at Verio, later NTT, an international backbone provider, from which I graduated in 2001 as VP of IP Networking after five years, eleven if you count RAINet.

• Before that, I was the principal engineer of RAINet, Oregon's and Washington's premier ISP, which was Verio's first acquisition. I spent 15 months at AT&T doing global Internet architecture and research, but I was just not telphant material.

Community Service

• I helped found and organize a number of operators' fora and RIRs: NANOG, AfNOG, AfriNIC, ARIN, etc.
• I have served on many TPCs and conference organizations.
• I spent many years in the IETF in service roles and [co-]]authored far too many Internet-Drafts and RFCs. For a curmudgeonly view see here.
• I helped the ISOC organize the infrastructure for the ORG/NET work helped with a number of projects in developing economies, and helped with the Hall of Fame selection.
• I participated in a number of computer language standards efforts. E.g. For a decade, I led the US Modula-2 language standards efforts. I do not recommend the language as murdered by the international effort, as well documented by Pat Terry, though N Wirth's original designs have withstood the tests of time.
• I authored, but did not design, the basic FidoNet protocol standard.

2018.09.29