The Jon Postel reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Jon Postel

Jonathan Bruce Postel (August 6, 1943 - October 16, 1998) made many significant contributions to Internet standards. He is principally known for being the Editor.of the RFC document series from the IETF; he also initiated and ran the number asssignment clearinghouse, the IANA, from its inception to his death, He wrote and edited many important RFC's, including RFC's 0791-0793, which define the basic protocols of the Internet protocol suite, and RFC 2223.

He earned a Ph.D. in computer science from UCLA in 1974. He was the first member of the Internet Society and he also served on the Internet Architecture Board and the Board of Trustees of the Internet Society.

His contributions to building the Internet were regarded by his peers as being so great that an RFC was written in his memory (see External links below). This is no trivial thing given that between 1969 and February 2002, only 3,240 RFCs were published. He himself co-authored of over 200 RFCs.

RFC 0793 (http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/rfc/rfc793.txt) includes a robustness principle much quoted as "Postel's Law": "be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others."

External links

• The Postel Center
• http://www.isoc.org/postel/
• RFC 2468, "I remember IANA"

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