Connections

Paul Vixie was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2014 for work related to DNS. Vixie is a prolific author of open source Internet software including Cron and BIND, and of many Internet standards documents concerning DNS and DNSSEC. He was the founder and CEO of Farsight Security (2013-2021). In addition, he founded the first anti-spam company (MAPS, 1996), the first non-profit Internet infrastructure software company (ISC, 1994), and the first neutral and commercial Internet exchange (PAIX, 1991). He earned his Ph.D. from Keio University for work related to DNS and DNSSEC in 2010.

Dr. Dirk Trossen (male) is a Chief Network Architecture Researcher at Huawei’s Applied Network Technology Laboratory. His main responsibility lies in researching new network technologies for the Next Generation Internet through research engagements, including direct university relations. Dirk has more than 25 years of experience in network architectures, services and wireless technology with main contributions in the area of inter-domain networking as well as seamless handovers, physical network overlays and new service concepts for operators. He was the technical lead of the FP7 efforts PSIRP and PURSUIT, performing research on large-scale publish-subscribe information-centric systems. Prior to joining Huawei, Dirk was a Senior Principal Engineer at InterDigital Europe, Ltd, leading the network research team in the London office as the technical lead of the H2020 POINT, RIFE and FLAME projects on service-based architectures. Until April 2013, Dirk was a Senior Researcher at the Computer Laboratory of Cambridge University. Prior to this, Dirk was Chief Researcher at BT Research from 2007 to 2009 and Senior Principal Scientist with Nokia Research from 2000 to 2007. From 2009 to 2019, Dirk was also a Research Affiliate with the Advanced Network Architecture group at MIT CSAIL. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Technical University of Aachen, Germany and diploma degree in Mathematics from the same university. He published more than 85 peer-reviewed papers in international conferences and journals and holds currently more than 30 international patents in various areas. He was listed among the top 50 Industrial IoT Innovators in the 2016 RCR Wireless list.

Nalini Elkins is the founder and CEO of Inside Products (a high-tech software company developing network management and diagnostics products) and the President and co-founder of Industry Network Technology Council (a non-profit consortium of industry, government, and academia).

Nalini specializes in protocol analysis, development, and engineering.  Her specialties include performance management on wide-area broadband networks, IPv6, and network security.   Her software products have been OEMed by IBM and other large software vendors.  Nalini is the co-author of RFC8250 (Embedded Performance Diagnostics and Monitoring (PDM) for IPv6) and other RFCs produced by the IETF.  She has taught networking and protocol classes to Fortune 500 level companies globally.

Geoff is the Chief Scientist at APNIC, and he performs a range broad based measurement activities to inform the community on aspects of IPv6 deployment, routing behaviours, and network resilience and security. He is an active participant in the IETF and has authored some 44 RFCs. He has been involved in the Internet since the late 80’s and prior to the APNIC worked in operations engineering for a major Australian ISP. He is a mathematician by education, a software engineer by profession, and an amateur economic historian by inclination.

Martin Thomson enjoys making protocols.  He takes particular pride in making protocols that lots of people use, like HTTP/2, QUIC, and WebPush.  Making protocols that are safer - more secure and private - is his particular focus.  Martin is a Distinguished Engineer at Mozilla.

Bob Hinden is a Check Point Fellow at Check Point Software, and co-chairs the IPv6 working group in the IETF. He is the co-inventor of the Internet Protocol Version 6 Protocol (IPv6).
Bob Hinden was the Chair of the Internet Society Board of Trustees from 2013 to 2016, and a member of the Board of Trustees from 2010-2016. Previously at Nokia, he was a Nokia Fellow, Chief Internet Technologist at Nokia Networks, and Chief Technical Officer (CTO) at the Nokia IP Routing Group. Bob Hinden was one of the early employees (i.e., employee number 4) of Ipsilon Networks, Inc. Ipsilon was acquired by Nokia on December 31, 1997. He was previously employed at Sun Microsystems where he was responsible for the Internet Engineering group that implements internet protocols for Sun's operating systems. Prior to this he worked at Bolt, Beranek, and Newman, Inc. on a variety of internetwork related projects including the first operational internet router and one of the first TCP/IP implementations.
Bob Hinden was co-recipient of the 2008 IEEE Internet Award for pioneering work in the development of the first Internet routers.Bob Hinden has been active in the IETF since 1985 and is the author of forty-seven RFCs, including three April 1 RFCs. He served as the chair of the IETF Administrative Oversight Committee (IAOC) from 2009 through 2013. Prior to this he served on the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), was Area Director for Routing in the Internet Engineering Steering group from 1987 to 1994, and chaired the IPv6, Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol, Simple Internet Protocol Plus, IPAE, the IP over ATM, and the Open Routing working groups. He is also a member of the RFC Editorial.
Bob Hinden holds an B.S.E.E., and a M.S. in Computer Science from Union College,
Schenectady, New York.

Ravishankar G Shiroor is the COO of Stellapps Technologies. He co-founded Stellapps in 2011 along with 4 others.  Ravishankar is a technology expert with 26+ years of experience in embedded software and telecommunications. Ravishankar was a member of Wipro Center of Excellence (COE) and headed Global Pre-sales & Consulting, Apps Practice for Wipro. He also served as strategy advisor for the likes of AT&T, Telstra, Nortel, Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent. Among other organizations, he has served as solutions architect for Sasken Technologies and as design engineer for Aplion Networks, USA. With a master’s degree in telecommunications from IIT Madras, Ravishankar is a thought leader in the areas of SDP, IoT, VAS and applications.

Georgios Z. Papadopoulos (MIEEE) serves as an Associate Professor at the IMT Atlantique in Rennes, France. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Bristol. He received his Ph.D. from University of Strasbourg, in 2015 with honors, his M.Sc. in Telematics Engineering from University Carlos III of Madrid in 2012 and his B.Sc. in Informatics from Alexander T.E.I. of Thessaloniki in 2011. Dr. Papadopoulos has participated in numerous international and national research projects on diverse networking verticals. He has received the prestigious French national ANR JCJC 2017 grant for young researchers. He has been involved in the organization and program committee of many international events, such as IEEE ISCC’20, IEEE DIPI’19, AdHoc-Now’18, IEEE CSCN’18, GIIS’18, IEEE ISCC’17. Moreover, he has been serving as Associate Editor for Wireless Networks journal and Internet Technology Letters since 2018. He is author of more than 60 peer-reviewed publications in the area of computer communications, networks and cybersecurity. He actively participates at the IETF standards organization with multiple drafts in the ROLL and RAW Working Groups. His research interests include Industrial IoT, 6TiSCH, 6lo, LoRa & LPWAN, Wireless Battery Management System, Smart Grid, Cybersecurity and Moving Target Defense. Dr. Papadopoulos has received the Best Ph.D. Thesis Award granted by the University of Strasbourg and he was a recipient of two Best Paper Awards (IFIP Med-Hoc-Net’14 and IEEE SENSORS’14).

Lincoln Lavoie is a senior engineer at the University of New Hampshire Interoperability Laboratory, responsible for the Broadband and Open Source programs offered by the lab, including: NFV, Gfast, DSL, Wi-Fi, and PON programs.  He currently serves as the technical chair of the Broadband Forum and the chair of the Linux Foundation Networking project’s certification committee.  Lincoln has worked in the broadband industry for the past 15 years, with a focus on access technologies, and most recently the migration to virtualized and disaggregated technologies.  Lincoln received his Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of New Hampshire in 2008.

Jason Walls is Director of Technical Marketing at QA Cafe and Director of the Broadband User Services Work Area at the Broadband Forum. A protocol geek at heart, he's been involved with testing technologies like TR-069 since its inception and has spearheaded the creation of the User Services Platform (USP/TR-369). Jason has more than 20 years of computer networking experience, helping to develop internet and communications technology and translate it into value opportunities for organizations and the industry as a whole.

Éric Vyncke is an Area Director for the Internet Area of the IETF.

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He currently works at Cisco in the Emerging Technology & Innovation group where he focuses on standards, IPv6, telemetry, and security. He joined Cisco in 1997. Éric is also the co-chair of the Belgian IPv6 Council since 2012. His previous work at the IETF was around IPv6, and the information model, he is also the co-author of two network security books about layer-2 and IPv6. Finally, Éric is an associated professor at the University of Liège, Belgium, where he graduated with an M.S. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering in 1983.

When not reading internet drafts, Eric enjoys flying Cessna planes and gardening in his garden in Belgium.

Fernando Gont is Director of Information Security at EdgeUno. Gont has worked on a number of projects for the UK National Infrastructure Security Co-ordination Centre (NISCC) and the UK Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) in the field of communications protocols security. As part of his work for these organizations, he has written a series of documents with recommendations for network engineers and implementors of the TCP/IP protocol suite, and has performed the first thorough security assessment of the IPv6 protocol suite. He has been active in several working groups of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), where he has led many improvements to the IPv6 protocol suite, and has published 36 IETF RFCs (Request For Comments).

Gont has also developed the SI6 Network's IPv6 Toolkit -- a free, portable and comprehensive security asessment toolkit for the IPv6 protocol suite. Gont has been a speaker at a number of conferences and technical meetings about information security, operating systems, and Internet engineering, including: CanSecWest 2005, FIRST Technical Colloquium 2005, Kernel Conference Australia 2009, DEEPSEC 2009, HACK.LU 2011, DEEPSEC 2011, Hackito Ergo Sum 2012, German IPv6 Kongress 2014,  H2HC 2017, Positive Hack Days 8, Hack In Paris 2018, and Troopers 2018. Additionally, he is a regular attendee of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) meetings.

More information about Fernando Gont is available at his personal web site: <https://www.gont.com.ar>.

Paul Wilson has nearly 30 years’ involvement with the Internet, including 20 years as the head of APNIC, the Regional Internet address Registry for the Asia Pacific. In this role, he has led APNIC’s development as a provider of critical Internet services and as a key contributor to Internet growth and development throughout the Asia Pacific. Paul has worked as an expert and leader across the full range of communities and organizations involved in Internet development, including ISPs and network operators, non-profit organizations, governments and governmental agencies; and with many key organizations including RIRs, the IETF, ICANN, ISOC, APEC-TEL, the ITU and others.

Previously as Technical Director and CEO of Pegasus Networks, the first private ISP in Australia, Paul worked with early Internet technologies, and helped to establish many early Internet services in developing economies of the region.

Adrian Farrel has been at the forefront of technology innovation in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for nearly 25 years and has co-authored more than 85 RFCs specifying Internet technology. He was part of the effort that developed Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), and was one of the pioneers of Generalized MPLS (GMPLS) and the Path Computation Element (PCE).

Within the IETF, Adrian has co-chaired a number of working groups (CCAMP, PCE,
L1VPN, L2SM, L3SM, and I2NSF), and served as one of two IETF Routing Area
Directors for six years. He is currently the Technical Advisor to the IETF’s TEAS working group, and has just reached the end of a four year term as the Independent Submissions RFC Editor.

Adrian has written, edited, or contributed to nine books on Internet technologies including “The Internet and Its Protocols” and “GMPLS - Architecture and Applications”, and has also authored four volumes of fairy stories for adults of all ages.

He runs a successful consulting company, Old Dog Consulting, specializing in Internet protocols, SDN, and NFV.

Barbara Stark was a Lead Member of the Technical Staff in the Standards and Industry Alliances organization at AT&T when she retired in 2021. She had spent her entire (over 30 years) career working in the telecommunications industry, at AT&T, BellSouth, and then (as a result of merger) AT&T again. She has been involved in standards and external industry activities for IP-connected consumer electronics devices and home networking technologies since 1999, participating throughout the years in Broadband Forum (BBF), Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), National Emergency Number Association (NENA), Wi-Fi Alliance, HomeGrid Forum (on the Board of Directors), Broadband Internet Technology Advisory Group (BITAG), Consumer Technology Association (CTA), UPnP Forum, and Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA). In BBF, she was an instigator of TR-069 (CPE WAN Management Protocol) and has edited a variety of BBF Technical References (TRs). Barbara is also listed as an author or contributor of a handful of IETF RFCs, contributed to UPnP Forum and DLNA documents, and holds several patents. Barbara received a BSEE and BA (German language) from The University of Texas at Austin and a MSEE from Stanford University.​
 
​Barbara Stark won the Woman in Telecoms Award at the World Communication Awards 2019 for her pioneering role in the development of Broadband Forum’s globally-deployed TR-069 standard, its User Services Platform (USP), and a myriad of additional contributions to the Forum, as well as her contribution and leadership in other global standards organizations.

Dr. Pascal Thubert has been actively involved in research, development, and standards efforts on Internet mobility and wireless technologies since joining Cisco in 2000; he currently works at Cisco’s Chief Technology Office. Standards-wise, Pascal mostly contributes to the ETSI and the IETF. At the IETF, he co-chairs two IoT-related Working Groups and contributes to several others in the Internet and routing areas, where he authored 20+ RFCs the general context of IPv6, wireless, and the Internet of Things; he also contributed to the creation of  DetNet and RAW and participates to the IEEE/IETF coordination, the INT Area and the IoT directorates. Pascal holds an Engineering Degree from the Ecole Centrale de Lyon and a Ph.D. from IMT Atlantique, and above 300 patents.

Shwetha is a Principal Engineer at ThoughtSpot securing the application and cloud infrastructure. 

She has been an active contributor to IETF since 2008. She currently co-authors Insitu OAM related work, Attestation related work in RATS workgroup at IETF and chairs 6lo wg.
 
She serves on the IETF Ops and IOT directorate.

An avid coder, a system engineer working on solutions involving network and transport optimization. I have contributed towards more than a dozen open sources including Linux Kernel and worked closely with IETF Standards Working Groups (such as ROLL, 6lo, LWIG) and Linux Foundation Groups. Taken several projects from conception to market. Architected metering infrastructure based on 802.15.4G + PLC/6lo/RPL for Smart Grids and has a special interest in scalable mesh network architectures for low-power networks and has contributed towards IETF protocol standardization in the domain. Currently, I am part of the Accuknox team figuring out the best way to handle Zero-Trust based Security solutions involving Cloud/Edge/IoT.

Sundar is the co-founder of Pinaka Aerospace Pvt Ltd - a company working in the area of defence and aerospace. The company primarily serves the Indian market, and counts amongst its customers the full spectrum, from India’s Armed Forces, Public and Private Sector Tier-1 companies such as HAL, BEL, the Tata group, etc., and the R&D Labs under the Indian Defence R&D Organization. Sundar heads the new Space Business for Pinaka. Sundar began his career with the Indian Defence R&D Organization where he was involved in developing high-performance computing solutions for India’s missile program and light combat aircraft program. He has since worked at Hewlett Packard and Cisco where he has contributed to diverse technologies such as network security, network management and high-end routing. At Cisco, Sundar led various product development groups, and in his last stint, ran the engineering organization that built products bringing in revenue of over $1.7 Billion per annum for Cisco.
 

Sundar was also the co-founder and CEO of Sharanga Technologies - a startup which worked on security and management for highly scalable IoT networks – which exit via the successful sale of IP. He is currently in the board of two other stealth-mode startups in an advisory capacity and is the strategy advisor for the 75 Satellites mission. While at Cisco, he was involved as a mentor in the Cisco Launchpad program – a platform for startups to benefit from Cisco’s innovation ecosystem and connect with Cisco’s partner community to deliver business-relevant end-to-end solutions. Sundar has an MS in Computer Science and an MBA in General Management. He holds patents in the area of network security and network management. He has published papers in industry journals, and has been an invited speaker at technology symposiums and conventions.

Ron Bonica is a Distinguished Engineer at Juniper Networks, specializing in IPv6 and Segment Routing. He is active in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), having authored or co-authored twenty RFC documents and served three two-year terms as co-director of the IETF Operations and Management Area. Ron currently co-chairs the IETF V6OPS and OPSEC Working Groups.

Prior to joining Juniper Networks, Ron was employed by a major Internet Service Provider and operated an Layer 3 Virtual Private Network for U.S. Government customers.

20 years of industry experience in the telecom domain. Currently working as a Vice President and head of standards in Reliance Jio.  Current Vice Chair of TSDSI, Previous chair of TSDSI SG-Networks. Previously Co-Chair of the Asia Regional Operators Group; Small Cell Forum (SCF), Previously on the board of the International Multimedia Teleconferencing Consortium (IMTC). Over 200 granted patents in the wireless domain.

Carsten Bormann likes bringing the Internet to odd places. Honorary professor for Internet Technology at the Universität Bremen, he is a member of its Center for Computing and Communications Technology (TZI). His research interests are in protocol design and system architectures for networking.  In the IETF, he mainly has been working on bringing Internet Technology to new links, applications, or radios.  Since 2005, he has co-chaired, initiated, or co-authored many of the IETF efforts that now make up its Internet of Things (IoT) stack: he initiated the IETF work on Constrained RESTful Environments (CoRE) and the CoAP (Constrained Application) Protocol and co-chaired the IETF CoRE WG for its first ten years.  Most recently, he launched the Thing-to-Thing Research Group (T2TRG) in the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF). He has authored and co-authored 48 Internet RFCs, which have 439 citations in other Internet RFCs.

Michael Ackermann is the lead Network Engineer of the System Management and Monitoring Team, at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan.

He is responsible for all aspects of planning, engineering, deployment and administration for all enterprise wide Management, Monitoring and Diagnostic activities.

Mike also serves as a chief architect for all Plan related IT issues. He has been a member of the BluesNet and Network Advisory Group committees since their inception and has served as committee and subcommittee chair on numerous occasions. Mike has also been a member of several advisory boards and is currently active in the IETF.

Justin Iurman is a research fellow, teaching assistant and PhD student at the University of Liege in Belgium. He is passionate about network engineering and protocols in general, and about all other areas of computing too, whether high or low level. He also likes challenges where you have to surpass yourself.

For his PhD thesis, he is mainly working on new measurement techniques such as In-situ OAM (IOAM), for which he is the author of the IPv6 implementation in the Linux kernel.

Justin is active in the IETF since 2019, first as an implementer providing feedback to authors, and now as an author himself on different kinds of things.

Darren Dukes is a Principal Engineer at Cisco Systems where he designs and build solutions across Cisco’s enterprise and service provider routing platforms and enterprise switching platforms. His current focus is on Segment Routing (SRv6 and SR MPLS) software and their implementation, as well as building the next generation of routing and switching software stacks for Cisco’s enterprise networking portfolio.

Darren is active within the IETF, most recently concentrating on the SRv6 base document set including RFC8754, describing the Segment Routing Header (SRH) which is used by all other SRv6 specifications.

In his 25+ year career Darren has built solutions at all levels of the routing stack from drivers to the forwarding and control plane.  Darren is particularly interested in creating simple solutions in complex problem spaces.