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Re: remembering Jon Postel: Looking Beyond the Decade

  • From: Rodney Joffe
  • Date: Thu Oct 02 13:46:33 2008

On Oct 1, 2008, at 10:49 PM, Scott Francis wrote:

nice writeup by Mr. Cerf:
http://www.circleid.com/posts/ 20081001_remembering_jon_postel_a_decade/

I was not fortunate enough to have known Mr. Postel, but I have
developed a deep posthumous respect for the work he did from listening
to what others have had to say about him, and from using (and
benefiting from) his legacy on a daily basis. He was not alone among
the pioneers who enabled the Internet to become what it is today, but
there weren't many who made such a significant contribution.

You may want to then consider coming to the next NANOG being held in just under two weeks time in Los Angeles (http://www.nanog.org/). This NANOG celebrates Jon's contributions on the 10th Anniversary of his passing (Oct 16) and includes a rare keynote opening speech by Vint Cerf, as well as a 90 minute panel of folks who were "there" when some important decisions were made, and who will share with us the reasons some of those decisions were made. Panelists like Paul Mockapetris who invented the DNS, Bob Braden who has taken care of much of Jon's role as RFC editor since Jon left us, Danny Cohen who Jon worked for, and who also worked for Jon ;-) at ISI in the '70s, Bob Hinden who was the ietf's first Area Director for routing, Lixia Zhang who was part of a small group of 6 including Jon who tackled the issues of addressing for the iab/iesg, and Van Jacobson, who you probably know mostly for his congestion control work, but who Paul Francis "credits" for the concept of NAT. Of course these folks had many other key contributions to "the Internets".

Besides these official speakers at NANOG 44 you'll also get to meet in person many of Jon's peers and friends from the early days. I hesitate to name any, but if you listen carefully in the hallways, and for comments from the audience during this NANOG, you'll pick up on them.

If you want to get to know more about some of the people who really gave us the opportunity to do the things we do today, this is probably the NANOG you want to attend. BTW, it is a joint meeting with ARIN, so you get a two'fer.

""be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others" - Postel's Law