Geoff Huston | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1956or1957(age 66–67) |
| Citizenship | AU |
| Known for | AARNet |
| Awards | Internet Hall of Fame, Member of the Order of Australia |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee, APNIC, Telstra, ISOC |
| Website | www |
Geoff Huston AM is a scientist who orchestrated the construction of the first internet network between Australian universities known as AARNet. [1]
Geoff Huston studied at the Australian National University where he received his Bachelor of Science and then his Masters of Science which specialized in computer science. He then kept on working at ANU on computer networks. [2]
Computer networks had become common within universities but there were no real networks connecting universities to each other except for small networks like CISRONET and SPEARNet. These single protocol networks were not compatible with every computer and therefore had not been widely adopted. The lack of a real network in between universities a decade after the creation of ARPANet pushed academics to organize in an attempt to create a network similar to it. The Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee was approached to build the network and following a review of the initiative they recruited Huston to design and implement the network. He was chosen for the job because he had already worked on a plan to build the network previously. [3] [4]
After his plan was approved, Huston bought the necessary routers and set off with his colleague Peter Elford to set up these routers on each campus effectively bringing in 1990 the long awaited Australian Academic and Research Network online. The network was extremely popular from the get go and required constant upgrades to keep up with demand. The pressure to upgrade the network was so strong that the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee sold AARNet to Telstra in 1995. This acquisition also included Huston as his expertise on the network was key for its development. [3]
While Telstra's 1996 proposal for AARNet2 was not accepted, Huston stayed at the company and developed its internet offerings as the Chief Internet Scientist until 2005. [3] During that period he also was a member and then the executive director of the Internet Architecture Board, a member of the board trustees and then the chair of the Internet Society, a member of the board of the Public Internet Registry and the chair of the Internet Engineering and Planning Group among others. [2] [4]
He is currently working for the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre as Chief Scientist. He is also an active member of the Internet Engineering Task Force. [2]
While looking back at his role in the spread of the internet, Geoff has expressed frustration at how the internet has been developed and how it has impacted society. He referred to it as a "gigantic vanity-reinforcing distorted TikTok selfie". He believes that the fundamental protocols that underpin the Web have been badly programmed and that they do not guarantee a safe internet. Likewise he thinks that the internet has been perverted into a space in which misinformation is rampant and where a new predatory marketplace has been established. He also supports and advocates for net neutrality. [5]
The Internet is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a network of networks that consists of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast range of information resources and services, such as the interlinked hypertext documents and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), electronic mail, telephony, and file sharing.
Quality of service (QoS) is the description or measurement of the overall performance of a service, such as a telephony or computer network, or a cloud computing service, particularly the performance seen by the users of the network. To quantitatively measure quality of service, several related aspects of the network service are often considered, such as packet loss, bit rate, throughput, transmission delay, availability, jitter, etc.
A router is a networking device that forwards data packets between computer networks. Routers perform the traffic directing functions between networks and on the global Internet. Data sent through a network, such as a web page or email, is in the form of data packets. A packet is typically forwarded from one router to another router through the networks that constitute an internetwork until it reaches its destination node.
Stephen D. Crocker is an Internet pioneer. In 1969, he created the ARPA "Networking Working Group" and the Request for Comments series. He served as chair of the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) from 2011 through 2017.
Telecommunications in Australia refers to communication in Australia through electronic means, using devices such as telephone, television, radio or computer, and services such as the telephony and broadband networks. Telecommunications have always been important in Australia given the "tyranny of distance" with a dispersed population. Governments have driven telecommunication development and have a key role in its regulation.
An autonomous system (AS) is a collection of connected Internet Protocol (IP) routing prefixes under the control of one or more network operators on behalf of a single administrative entity or domain, that presents a common and clearly defined routing policy to the Internet. Each AS is assigned an autonomous system number (ASN), for use in Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing. Autonomous System Numbers are assigned to Local Internet Registries (LIRs) and end user organizations by their respective Regional Internet Registries (RIRs), which in turn receive blocks of ASNs for reassignment from the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). The IANA also maintains a registry of ASNs which are reserved for private use.
Leonard Kleinrock is an American computer scientist and Internet pioneer. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science.
Donald Watts Davies, was a Welsh computer scientist who was employed at the UK National Physical Laboratory (NPL).
AARNet provides Internet services to the Australian education and research communities and their research partners.
Kevin Robert Elz, often referred to in computing circles as Robert Elz, or simply kre, is a computer programmer and a pioneer in connecting Australia to the Internet, and more recently, in connecting Thailand.
Van Jacobson is an American computer scientist, renowned for his work on TCP/IP network performance and scaling. He is one of the primary contributors to the TCP/IP protocol stack—the technological foundation of today’s Internet. Since 2013, Jacobson is an adjunct professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) working on Named Data Networking.
Universities Australia is an organisation founded in Sydney in May 1920, which attempts to advance higher education through voluntary, cooperative and coordinated action. After being based for a time in both Sydney and Melbourne, its offices relocated to Canberra in 1966. It is a private company whose members are Australia's 39 universities. The universities are represented by their vice-chancellors.
Simon S. Lam is an American computer scientist. He retired in 2018 from The University of Texas at Austin as Professor Emeritus and Regents' Chair Emeritus in Computer Science #1. He made seminal and important contributions to transport layer security, packet network verification, as well as network protocol design, verification, and performance analysis.
Peter Thomas Kirstein was a British computer scientist who played a role in the creation of the Internet. He made the first internetworking connection on the ARPANET in 1973, by providing a link to British academic networks, and was instrumental in defining and implementing TCP/IP alongside Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn.
Internet in Australia first became available on a permanent basis to universities in Australia in May 1989, via AARNet. Pegasus Networks was Australia's first public Internet provider in June 1989. The first commercial dial-up Internet Service Provider (ISP) appeared in capital cities soon after, and by the mid-1990s almost the entire country had a range of choices of dial-up ISPs. Today, Internet access is available through a range of technologies, i.e. hybrid fibre coaxial cable, digital subscriber line (DSL), Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) and satellite Internet. In July 2009, the federal government, in partnership with the industrial sector, began rolling out a nationwide fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) and improved fixed wireless and satellite access through the National Broadband Network. Subsequently, the roll out was downgraded to a Multi-Technology Mix on the promise of it being less expensive and with earlier completion. In October 2020, the federal government announced an upgrade by 2023 of NBN fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) services to FTTP for 2 million households, at a cost of A$3.5 billion.
François Flückiger is a French computer scientist who worked at CERN. He was selected for induction in 2013 in the Internet Hall of Fame.
Craig Partridge is an American computer scientist, known for his contributions to the technical development of the Internet.
Prasant Mohapatra is an Indian-American computer scientist. Mohapatra is currently the Provost of the University of South Florida. Previously, he was Vice Chancellor for Research at University of California Davis (UC-Davis).
Peter Daniel Eckersley was an Australian computer scientist, computer security researcher and activist. From 2006 to 2018, he worked at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, including as chief computer scientist and head of AI policy. In 2018, he left the EFF to become director of research at the Partnership on AI, a position he held until 2020. In 2021, he co-founded the AI Objectives Institute.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Other | |
