In June 2002, Internet pioneer Stephen Wolff was honored by the Internet Society (ISOC) for his significant contributions
on behalf of the Internet. A founding member of the ISOC, Wolff is considered one of the "fathers of the Internet" and was directly
involved with its development and evolution.
Wolff received the Postel Service Award , named for Dr. Jonathan B. Postel, an Internet pioneer and head of the
organization that administered and assigned Internet names, protocol parameters, and Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. He
was the primary architect behind what has become the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the
successor organization to his work. The recipient of the award receives a $20,000 cash honoraria.
"We are pleased to recognize Steve with the Postel Award," said ISOC President/CEO Lynn St.Amour, "especially as his contributions
are well known to ISOC, having previously been commended by ISOC's board for helping transform the Internet from an activity serving
the particular goals of the research community to a worldwide enterprise which has energized scholarship and commerce in dozens of
nations."
The 1994 commendation from the ISOC board also states that "The personal leadership of Dr. Wolff, often under conditions of public
controversy, has been an indispensable ingredient in surmounting a daunting array of technical, operational and economic
challenges. His extraordinary commitment to the growth and success of the Internet reflect the highest standard of service to the
networking community and command our respect and admiration."
As Director of the Division of Networking and Communications Research and Infrastructure at the US National Science Foundation, he
was responsible for NSNET, the National Research and Education Network (NREN), and for NSF's support of basic research in
networking and communications. While at the NSF he was among the founders of the interagency and international research networking
management and advisory structure whose descendants today include the Large-scale Networking (LSN) working group and the
PITAC.
Wolff left the federal government and joined Cisco Systems, Inc. in 1995, where he works in the University Research
Program—Cisco's program supporting academic investigators with unrestricted grants for research on computer
networks.
Wolff was educated at Swarthmore College, Princeton University, and Imperial College. He taught electrical engineering at the Johns
Hopkins University for ten years and subsequently spent fifteen years leading a computing- and network-related research group at
the U.S. Army Research Laboratory. In 1983 he took a sabbatical half-year as a Program Director in the Mathematics Division of the
U.S. Army Research Office.
ISOC is a not-for-profit membership organization founded in 1991 to be the international focal point for global cooperation and
coordination in the development of the Internet. Through its current initiatives in support of education and training, Internet
standards and protocol, and public policy, ISOC has played a critical role in ensuring that the Internet has developed in a stable
and open manner. For 10 years ISOC has run international network training programs for developing countries which have played a
vital role in setting up the Internet connections and networks in virtually every country that has connected to the Internet. For
more information, please visit: http://www.isoc.org/ .
Recently ICANN posted a preliminary Staff Report on the selection of a new registry operator to assume responsibility on January 1,
2003 for the .org registry. The report, which is subject to public comment and comment by all the bidders
before being submitted for approval to the ICANN Board of Directors, recommends that the Board select the Internet Society
(ISOC) as the successor registry operator for the .org registry, currently operated by
VeriSign.
This preliminary report follows an extensive bid solicitation and evaluation process that was launched last April. Eleven bids were
received in response to a Request for Proposals. These bids were analyzed and evaluated by three evaluation teams that operated
independently of each other.
"We received eleven very strong and thoughtful proposals," noted Stuart Lynn, President of ICANN. "We appreciate the response of
the institutions behind these proposals. The ISOC proposal was the only one that received top ranking from all three evaluation
teams. On balance, their proposal stood out from the rest." Lynn also emphasized the openness and transparency of the solicitation
and evaluation process.
Two evaluation teams focused on technical issues: one from Gartner, Inc., an international consulting and research organization
that specializes in information technologies, and the other a team mainly composed of CIOs of major universities. Another team was
provided by ICANN's Non Commercial Domain Name Holders constituency; the NCDNHC team focused on the effectiveness of the
proposals to address the particular needs of the .org registry. The staff report integrates these
evaluations and other factors into the preliminary recommendation.
ISOC is an international not-for-profit organization of over 6,000 individual and 150 organizational members with chapters in over
100 countries. It provides leadership in addressing issues that confront the future of the Internet, as well as being a home for
the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Architecture Board (IAB).
In operating the .org registry, ISOC will team with Afilias, an operating registry that recently launched
the .info top level domain (TLD) that was authorized by ICANN as one of seven new TLDs over this
past year.
"Afilias will provide ISOC with the necessary experience at operating a large registry," said Lynn. "The
.info registry already houses about 1 million domain names, which is on a scale that approaches the much
older .org registry."
ICANN is re-assigning the .org registry under a revised agreement among ICANN, VeriSign, and the U.S.
Department of Commerce that was signed in May 2001. Under that agreement, VeriSign was permitted to keep its registrar business,
NSI (that it was obligated to sell under the prior agreements) provided that it agreed to relinquish .org
at the end of December 2002, and subject to other provisions of the revised agreements. As part of those revised agreements,
VeriSign agreed to endow the new operator with US$ 5 million to help fund operating costs, provided that the new operator was a
not-for-profit organization.
Following an open and transparent process, ICANN has posted all eleven applications online together with all supplemental material
and community comments received. The preliminary staff report and the evaluations are posted at:
http://www.icann.org/tlds/org/preliminary-evaluation-report-19aug02.htm.
Applicants and any member of the community are invited to send comments on the preliminary report and evaluations by e-mail to:
org-eval@icann.org
The IETF will meet in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, November 17?21, 2002.
http://www.ietf.org/meetings/meetings.html
ICANN will meet in Shanghai, China, October 27?31, 2002.
The next Asia Pacific Regional Internet Conference on Operational Technologies (APRICOT) will take place February 19-28,
2003 in Taipei, Taiwan.
http://apricot2003.net/
Ole J. Jacobsen , Editor and Publisher
Dr. Vint Cerf , Sr. VP, Internet Architecture and Technology WorldCom, USA
Dr. Jon Crowcroft , Marconi Professor of Communications Systems University of Cambridge,
England
David Farber
The Alfred Fitler Moore Professor of Telecommunication Systems University of Pennsylvania, USA
Peter Löthberg , Network Architect
Stupi AB, Sweden
Dr. Jun Murai , Professor, WIDE Project
Keio University, Japan
Dr. Deepinder Sidhu , Professor, Computer Science & Electrical Engineering, University of
Maryland, Baltimore County Director, Maryland Center for Telecommunications Research, USA
Pindar Wong , Chairman and President
VeriFi Limited, Hong Kong
The Internet Protocol Journal is published quarterly by the Chief Technology Office, Cisco Systems, Inc.
www.cisco.com
Tel: +1 408 526-4000
E-mail: ipj@cisco.com
Cisco, Cisco Systems, and the Cisco Systems logo are registered trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. in the USA and certain other
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Copyright © 2002 Cisco Systems Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the USA.