Postel, Jonathan Bruce

▪ 1999

      American computer scientist (b. Aug. 6, 1943, Altadena, Calif.—d. Oct. 16, 1998, Santa Monica, Calif.), was lauded for his work as a creator and manager of the Internet. In the late 1960s, when correspondence was sent via "snail mail" rather than E-mail and no one had ever heard of a Web site, Postel was a graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles, and was working to develop the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), a forerunner of the Internet designed for use by the U.S. Department of Defense. During its development Postel took on some of the administrative functions of this system, and later of the Internet, a responsibility he continued for some three decades. He formed and served as director of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, which was responsible for, among other duties, allocating numerical addresses (IP numbers) and turning those into simpler written addresses (i.e., ). Postel's behind-the-scenes influence over the Internet was made more visible in early 1998 when, during a test, he redirected some of the Internet's directory-information computers to his own system. The Internet grew rapidly in the 1990s, and there was concern about its lack of regulation. Shortly before his death Postel submitted a proposal for review by the U.S. government for the acceptance of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, an international nonprofit organization that would oversee the Internet. At the time of his death, Postel was also director of the computer networks division of the University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute.

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