Jon Postel

Jon Postel (Photo by Irene Fertik, USC News Service. Copyright 1994, USC)

Jonathan "Jon" Bruce Postel , IPA : [ pə'stɛl ] (born August 6, 1943 in Altadena ; † October 16, 1998 in Santa Monica ) was an American computer scientist and pioneer of the Internet , for whose development he, in particular with regard to Standards , made numerous significant contributions.

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Jon Postel graduated with a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science degree in engineering (1966 and 1968, respectively) and a Doctor of Philosophy in computer science in 1974, all from the University of California, Los Angeles .

During his studies at the University of California, Los Angeles , he was involved as an assistant at ARPAnet . He later went to the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute , where he spent the remainder of his professional life.

Postel is best known as the editor of Requests for Comments (RFC), a role he held for nearly thirty years. During this time he wrote more than 200 RFCs himself, including such basic ones as RFC 791 to RFC 793 ( IP , ICMP and TCP ) and RFC 2223 ( Instructions to RFC Authors ).

Perhaps his best-known legacy comes from RFC 793 , which contains the robustness principle and is often referred to as Postel's law : “be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others”. “Be conservative in what you do tolerant in what you accept from others ", often formulated as" be conservative in what you send, be tolerant in what you receive ").

In the RFC series, a virtual memorial stone was placed on him after his death with the RFC 2468 by Vint Cerf .

Postel was a founding member of the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the first individual member of the Internet Society and part of its Board of Trustees .

He also initiated the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and got her from the beginning until his death as a director before. As a result, among other things, Postel held a very important position for the Internet, but one that was rather unknown to the public. With his bushy beard , long hair and friendly nature, however, he shaped the image of the Internet community in a positive way.

The Postel Service Award of the Internet Society as well as the Postel Center at the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) are named after him in his honor.

Shortly before his death, he was awarded the Silver Medal of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for his work on the development of the Internet - an award normally reserved for heads of state.

He died of complications after heart surgery in Los Angeles on October 16, 1998.

Web links

• Postel.org Postel Center of the University of Southern California
• RFC 2441 - Working with Jon, obituary
• RFC 2468 - "I remember IANA", obituary