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Jon Postel

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Jon Postel
Born(1943-08-06)August 6, 1943
Altadena, California,U.S.
DiedOctober 16, 1998(1998-10-16)(aged 55)
Santa Monica, California,U.S.
EducationUniversity of California, Los Angeles(BS,MS,PhD)
Known forRequest for Comment
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
Postel's Law
AwardsInternet Hall of FamePioneer, Posthumous Recipient (2012), ACMSIGCOMM Award(1997),[1]ITU Silver Medal (1998),[2]ISOC Jonathan B. Postel Service Award (1999, posthumous)[3]
Scientific career
FieldsComputer science
Doctoral advisorDave Farber

Jonathan Bruce Postel(/pəˈstɛl/;August 6, 1943 – October 16, 1998) was an Americancomputer scientistwho made many significant contributions to the development of theInternet,particularly with respect tostandards.He is known principally for being the Editor of theRequest for Comment(RFC) document series, forSimple Mail Transfer Protocol(SMTP), and for administering theInternet Assigned Numbers Authority(IANA) until his death.

During his lifetime he was referred to as the "god of the Internet"[4][5]for his comprehensive influence; Postel himself noted that this "compliment" came with a barb, the suggestion that he should be replaced by a "professional," and responded with typical self-effacing matter-of-factness: "Of course, there isn’t any 'God of the Internet.' The Internet works because a lot of people cooperate to do things together."[6]

Career[edit]

Postel attendedVan Nuys High School,[7]and thenUCLAwhere he earned his B.S. (1966) as well as his M.S. (1968) in Engineering. There he completed his Ph.D. in computer science in 1974, withDave Farberas his thesis advisor.

Map of the Internet, created by Jon Postel in 1982

Postel started work at UCLA on 23 December 1969 as a Postgraduate Research Engineer (I) where he was involved in early work on theARPANET.He was involved in the development of the Internet domain system and, at his instigation,Vint CerfandBob Kahndeveloped a second set of protocols for handling data between networks, which is now known asInternet protocol suite.[8]Together with Cerf andSteve Crocker,Postel worked on implementing most of the ARPANET protocols.[9]Cerf would later become one of the principal designers of the TCP/IP standard,[9]which works because of the sentence known asPostel's Law.[10]

Postel worked with ARPANET until 24 August 1973 when he left to joinMITRE Corporation.He assisted withNetwork Information Center,which was being set up atSRIbyElizabeth Feinler.In March 1977, he joined theInformation Sciences Instituteat theUniversity of Southern Californiaas a research scientist.[11]

Postel was theRFCEditor from 1969 until his death, and wrote and edited many important RFCs, including RFC 791, RFC 792 and RFC 793, which define the basic protocols of theInternet protocol suite,and RFC 2223,Instructions to RFC Authors.Between 1982 and 1984 Postel co-authored the RFCs which became the foundation of today'sDNS(RFC 819, RFC 881, RFC 882 and RFC 920) which were joined in 1995 by RFC 1591 which he also co-wrote. In total, he wrote or co-authored more than 20 RFCs.[12]

Postel served on theInternet Architecture Boardand its predecessors for many years. He was the Director of the names and number assignment clearinghouse, theInternet Assigned Numbers Authority(IANA), from its inception. He was the first member of theInternet Society,and was on its Board of Trustees. He was the original and long-time.usTop-Level Domainadministrator. He also managed the Los Nettos Network.

All of the above were part-time activities he assumed in conjunction with his primary position as Director of the Computer Networks Division, Division 7, of the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California.[13]

DNS Root Authority test, U.S. response[edit]

Postel in 1994 with map of Internet top-level domains

On January 28, 1998, Postel, as a test, emailed eight of the twelve operators of Internet's regionalroot nameserverson his own authority and instructed them to reconfigure their servers,[14]changing the root zone server from thenSAICsubsidiaryNetwork Solutions' A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET (198.41.0.4) to IANA's DNSROOT.IANA.ORG (198.32.1.98). The operators complied with Postel's instructions, thus dividing control of Internet naming between the non-government operators with IANA and the 4 remaining U.S. Government roots atNASA,DoD,andBRLwith NSI. Though usage of the Internet was not interrupted, Postel was threatened by US Presidential science advisorIra Magazinerwith the statement "You'll never work on the Internet again" and was ordered to end the test[15]which he did.[16]Within a week, the USNTIAissuedA proposal to improve technical management of Internet names and addresses,including changes to authority over the InternetDNS root zone,[17]which ultimately, and controversially,[18]increased U.S. control.[19]

Death[edit]

On October 16, 1998, Postel died of complications fromheart surgeryin Los Angeles. He was recovering from asurgery to replace a leaking heart valve.[20]

Legacy[edit]

The significance of Jon Postel's contributions to building the Internet, both technical and personal, were such that a memorial recollection of his life and his work forms part of the core technical literature sequence of the Internet in the form ofRFC2468"I Remember IANA", written by Vint Cerf.

The Postel Center atInformation Sciences Institute,University of Southern California,is named in his honor, as is the annualPostel Award.In 2012, Postel was inducted into theInternet Hall of Fame.[21]The Channel Islands' Domain Registry building was named after him in early 2016.[22][23]

Another tribute, "Working with Jon: Tribute delivered at UCLA, October 30, 1998" (RFC2441), was written byDanny Cohen.

Perhaps his most famous legacy is fromRFC760,which includes arobustness principleoften calledPostel's law:"an implementation should be conservative in its sending behavior, and liberal in its receiving behavior" (reworded in RFC 1122 as "Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send" ).

The Jonathan B. Postel Service Award is an award named after Postel. The award has been presented most years since 1999 by theInternet Societyto "honor a person who has made outstanding contributions in service to the data communications community." The first recipient of the award was Postel himself, posthumously.[24]The award was created byVint Cerfas chairman of theInternet Societyand announced in"I rememberIANA"published asRFC2468.[25]

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^"Postel and Pouzin: 1997 SIGCOMM Award Winners".RetrievedFebruary 22,2022.
  2. ^"Jon Postel awarded ITU silver medal at INET '98 for his central role in the success story of the Internet".July 22, 1998.RetrievedFebruary 22,2022.
  3. ^"A ten year tribute to Jon Postel: An Internet visionary".RetrievedFebruary 22,2022.
  4. ^"Postel Disputes".The Economist.Vol. 343, no. 8453. February 8, 1997.God, at least in the West, is often represented as a man with a flowing beard and sandals... if the Net does have a god, he is probably Jon Postel, a man who matches that description to a T. Mr. Postel's claim to cyber-divinity, besides his appearance, is that he is the chairman and, in effect, the sole member of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, the organization that coordinates almost all Internet addresses.
  5. ^q:Jon Postel
  6. ^Duhanic, Mario (February 8, 2018)."Thanks, Jon and John! About Gods and Knights".
  7. ^Hafner, Katie; Lyon, Matthew (1996).Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet.Simon & Schuster. p.137.ISBN0-684-81201-0.Steve Crocker and Vint Cerf had been best friends since attending Van Nuys High School in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley.... While Cerf and Crocker were academic stars, Postel, who was twenty-five, had had a more checkered academic career. He had grown up in nearby Glendale and Sherman Oaks, and he too had attended Van Nuys High School, where his grades were mediocre.
  8. ^Banks, Michael (2008).On the Way to the Web: The Secret History of the Internet and Its Founders.Berkeley, CA: Apress. pp.76.ISBN9781430208693.
  9. ^abMueller, Milton L. (2009).Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. p. 75.ISBN9780262263795.
  10. ^Liska, Allan (2015).Building an Intelligence-Led Security Program.Waltham, MA: Syngress. p. 1.ISBN9780128021453.
  11. ^"USC Memorial Tribute for Jonathan B. Postel".University of Southern California. November 5, 1998. Archived fromthe originalon May 21, 2011.RetrievedApril 8,2011.
  12. ^"Datatracker profile for Jon Postel".IETF.
  13. ^*"Jon Postel Biography".isi.edu.June 5, 1997. Archived fromthe originalon December 6, 1998.RetrievedApril 8,2011.
  14. ^Singer, P. W.; Friedman, Allan (December 4, 2013).Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know.Oxford University Press.ISBN9780199364572.
  15. ^
  16. ^Bridis, Ted (AP) (February 5, 1998)."Internet reconfiguration turns out to be rogue test".The Daily News (Kentucky).
  17. ^"A proposal to improve technical management of Internet names and addresses. Discussion Draft 1/30/98".NTIA.org. January 30, 1998. Archived fromthe originalon February 7, 1998.
  18. ^Froomkin, A. Michael(2000)."Wrong turn in cyberspace: Using ICANN to route around the APA and the Constitution".University of Miami School of Law.(cited 50 Duke L. J. 17 (2000))
  19. ^Cukier, Kenneth (February 16, 1998)."Testing times for Net guardians".Communications Week International.Archived from the original on February 19, 1999.{{cite web}}:CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  20. ^Jon Postel, Internet Pioneer, Dies at 55 after Heart Surgery.Washington Post, 1998-10-18. Accessed 2016-09-09.
  21. ^"2012 Inductees".Internet Hall of Fame. 2012. Archived fromthe originalon December 13, 2012.RetrievedApril 24,2012.
  22. ^"Delegation Record for.GG".iana.org.Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. March 8, 2016.
  23. ^"Delegation Record for.JE".iana.org.Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. March 8, 2016.
  24. ^"Postel Service Award - Past awards".ISOC.Archived fromthe originalon January 7, 2010.RetrievedAugust 5,2008.
  25. ^Vint Cerf(October 1998)."I remember IANA".RFC 2468.RetrievedAugust 5,2008.

External links[edit]

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