a moment of silence

Thu Oct 14 18:29:10 UTC 1999

In message <Pine.SV4.3.96.991014111538.5120A-100000 at inx>, "John D. Vo" writes:

>Forgive my igorance. Who is Jon Postel?

Short summary.

Jon Postel was the RFC Editor from the series inception (1969) until his death
last year.  He was also the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, and gave
out all IP addresses, TCP and UDP reserved ports, top level domain names,
and the like.

More important, he was the author/editor of the specifications for TCP, IP,
SMTP, and a raft of other Internet protocols, and during the Internet's
early operational years, was the Internet Architect -- responsible for
overseeing lots of the work of revising and revamping the protocols as
they bent and broke during early operational use in the 1980s.

Those who had the pleasure of working with Jon typically remember him
as thoughtful, fair, and deeply interested in the welfare of the Internet.
He put the Internet's welfare well ahead of his own -- he never cashed
in on his expertise.  Jon wasn't perfect -- he did make mistakes -- but
he invariably made them after careful thought and tried to make the
decision he believed was best for the Internet.

Craig