May 14, 2012 7:00am by David Farrar

Internet Hall of Fame Pioneers

As someone who appreciates the impact of the Internet on society, I am always interested in those who helped make it happen. The Internet Hall of Fame inducts in some of those who have made major contributions.

They have three categories – pioneers, global connectors and innovators. For those interested here are the pioneers:

Paul Baran – helped invent packet switching
Vint Cerf – co-designer of TCP/IP protocols that the Internet runs on
Danny Cohen – first application of packet switching to real-time applications
Steve Crocker – developed the protocols for the ARPANET
Donald Davies – one of the inventors of packet switching computer networking
Elizabeth Feinler – pioneered and managed the ARPANET, and the Defense Data Network (DDN), network information centers
Charles Herzfeld – director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in the 1960s, oversaw the decision for the creation of ARPANET
Robert Kahn – co-designer of TCP/IP protocols that the Internet runs on
Peter Kirstein – started the first European ARPANET node with transatlantic IP connectivity
Leonard Kleinrock – pioneered the mathematical theory of packet networks
John Klensin – involved in the early procedural and definitional work for DNS administration and top-level domain definitions
Jon Postel – contributed to TCP/IP, SMTP and DNS development. RFC Editor. Created and was IANA. Internet Society founder.
Louis Pouzin – designed the CYCLADES computer network and its datagram packet switching network, from which TCP/IP was derived
Lawrence Roberts – designed and managed the first packet network, the ARPANET