Jon Postel

(1)

Introduction

Jon Postel was born on August 6, 1943 in Altadena in the U.S. state of California.(2) He has been hailed as a technical genius. Throughout his career as a computer scientist, he made numerous compelling contributions to the development of what we know today as the Internet.

Discussion

He is known worldwide for being the editor of the Request For Comment (RFC) document series and for administering the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).(3) The IANA is a government-contracted agency that runs the system that tells computers where to route all Internet traffic.(4)

Postel attended UCLA and in 1974, he completed his Ph.D. in computer science.(5) His influence is felt throughout the Internet, in its protocols, in their documentation, in their DNS names and also in the ‘dot’ we use to separate them. He was a key figure in the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) which has been credited for dispensing the five most popular domain names worldwide(6) –

.com
.org
.gov
.net
.edu

ICANN was officially created in early October in the year 1998, just two weeks before Jon’s untimely death.(7) He worked briefly at Mitre Corporation and from there he went on to help set up the Network Information Centre (NIC). In March 1977, he joined the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) at the University of Southern California, which carries out advanced research in the areas of computers and communications, where he stayed for the remainder of his career.(8)

People described him as the most powerful person on the Internet. So powerful was he that ‘The Economist’ once dubbed him “God of the Internet”.(9) His power led the US Presidential science advisor, Ira Magaziner, to fear Postel and this resulted in him issuing a threat to Postel saying “you’ll never work on the Internet again” following his attempt to reduce the influence of Network Solutions’ which had “undermined IANA’s authority”.(10) He played a significant role in the worldwide growth and development of the Internet. Postel is the most recognisable archetype of an Internet pioneer. He worked in the areas of computer communication protocols, leaning more towards the operating system level and the application level. He was the first member of the Internet Society and he was the original .us domain administrator.(11) Up until his death in October 1998, his greatest achievement was the operating of the IANA, which is the central piece of the infrastructure.(12)

Postel, who was one of the most important pioneers of the Internet and Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), published a set of comments in regard to the state of TCP. “His vision was prophetic, because we now know that having TCP handle all of these activities would have led to large scale problems down the road.”(13) TCP/IP determines how data is moved through a network. His technical influence can be seen directly in the centre of many of the protocols which, in turn, make the Internet function correctly. In regard to this, Jon Postel was quoted in 1977 saying: “we are screwing up in our design of Internet protocols by violating the principle of layering. Specifically we are trying to use TCP to do two things: serve as a host level end to end protocol, and to serve as an Internet packaging and routing protocol. These two things should be provided in a layered and modular way. I suggest that a new distinct internetwork protocol is needed, and that TCP be used strictly as a host level end to end protocol”.(14) It evolved from Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), which was the world’s first wide area network.

He was involved in the beginning of the ARPANET, which was the network that became the basis for the Internet. In 1969 in UCLA, he assisted in the installation of the ARPANET’s first communications switch, which routes network traffic. He oversaw the documentation of the Internet’s procedures and technical standards for a quarter of a century. Its concept was to break information up into smaller pieces, each of which would carry a separate address. By following certain rules, the smaller pieces could be relayed from computer to computer, finding its own way without any problems from sender to receiver, where it would be correctly reassembled into the proper sequence.(15) His work made it quite easy for people to add computers to the Internet as they wanted, which contributed greatly to its rapid growth. Postel wielded enormous influence managing technical details of the Global Computer Network which in turn, made it accessible to millions of people across the world. His work stands out along with the likes of fellow communications pioneers Thomas Edison and Guglielmo Marconi.(15)

Throughout his life, Postel was known as an authoritative figure who could smoothly and rapidly settle heated technical debates that often raged as the Internet grew bigger.(15)

Jon Postel was an intensely private man who shunned publicity from the beginning of his career right up to his final days. He went about his work diligently and humbly. He preferred to work behind the scenes and was hardly known by people outside high-tech circles.(16)

Conclusion

Postel died on October 16, 1998 at the age of 55 in a Los Angeles hospital while recovering from surgery to replace a leaking heart valve. According to friends and colleagues, he underwent heart valve replacement surgery in 1991 but the replacement started to leak and he was admitted to hospital immediately for the same surgical procedure.(17)

Over the course of a thirty year career, he played a critical role in the Internet’s past, present and also its future. He created a stable system capable of surviving him. Both the Postal Centre at Information Sciences Institute and the Internet Society’s Postel Award are named in his honour.

His legacy is a proud one but his work remains unfinished. (18)

References