Informal Biography

An ex-compiler, realtime kernel hack, and a software engineering manager, I have over 40 years in the computer industry. I have been a user and occasional implementor of networking in the US from the ARPANET to the current day internet.

I work as a Research Fellow at Internet Initiative Japan. I spent a bit over a year at AT&T doing global internet architecture and research, but I was just not telphant material. I gained considerable network operational experience as as the founding engineer at Verio, a backbone provider, from which I graduated in 2001 as VP of IP Networking after five years. Before that, I was the principal engineer of RAINet, Oregon's and Washington's premier ISP, which was Verio's first acquisition.

I was founder and the original PI for the Network Startup Resource Center, an NSF-supported pro bono effort. I have been involved for over twenty years with the deployment and integration of appropriate networking technology in the developing world. I gave a speech on the subject at Rhodes University in April 2002.

I was a (too) long-time co-chair of IETF workimg group on the DNS, dnsext (nee dnsind). I served as a member of the IESG, as co-chair of the IETF Operations and Management Area, mainly covering the operations area. I contributed a number of documents and presentations to the IETF. A bit on my feelings of the IETF's relevance is here.

At RIPE-37, I gave a presentation on some problems and possible approaches to the issues of identity, i.e. person records, in the address, routing, and domain registries. At RIPE 40/Prague, I presented News at Eleven, the work on BGP growth analysis showing that we  prefix lenth filtering would extend the live of the current global routing system until we can fix it. At RIPE 43/Rodos, I presented some research showing that Route Flap Damping is Harmful.

I have made a number of presentations at NANOG, the North American Network Operators' Group. I currently serve on the NANOG Steering Committee. I have presented/ranted at APNIC on a number of topics over the years.

At AfNOG 2002 in Lome, Togo, I chaired a panel on the Hard Lessons of Internet eXchange Points.

At APNIC, I have been the Routing SIG co-Chair, Policy SIG co-Chair, Fees WG Chair

A presentation on operator/research cooperation from the DARPA PI meeting on 2002.01.16. At the same meeting, a research crew in which I participate presented an analysis of a purported major BGP event.

I also ranted about the Condition of the DNS at the IEPG, the Internet Engineering and Planning Group, in Jan '96. In August '97, Dave Meyer and I presented our work on the InteRed exchange in Panama.

My involvement in the DNS political arena led me to be the principal author of draft-ymbk-itld-admin-00.txt. I chaired the short-lived ACM Internet Governance Committee and was a founding member of the Non-Commercial Domain Name Holders' Constituency of the DNSO of ICANN.

I was a founding Board of Trustee member of the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), and have spoken in many venues for many years on ARIN's behalf, see presentation. On 2001.04.02, Mirjam Kuehne and I presented IPv6 Addressing Technology and Policy Developments between the IETF and the RIR community.

For a decade, I led the US Modula-2 language standards efforts. I do not recommend the language as murdered by the international effort, 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.

Although I was technical program chair for INET'96, most of the credit for this goes to the individual session chairs.  I have served on various research technical program committees, ICNP, PAM, etc.

FreeRAIN was a pro bono low-speed public network a few folk maintained, and may still maintain, around the Portland area. There was a ConneXions article on it as well.

My laptop used to be an IPM ThinkPad T41 running FreeBSD 7.x-current. If it might be of help to you, here is the kernel, XF86Config, dmesg, and /boot/loader.conf.local.

I used to have a Dell Latitude C600. Here is how it was configured. Before I gave up on Sony because of their abysmal support, I had a Sony Vaio 505TX running FreeBSD. I have stashed some configuration hints for it should you be curious.

Though I now have an iPhone, I used to have a Nokia 8890 GSM phone. Here are some tools and hacks for it. I also bought a Sony-Ericsson T68i, but wish I had not. I am trying to accumulate clues for using GPRS with UNIX laptops.

2010.01.18