Postel and Pouzin Award Details

Postel and Pouzin: 1997 SIGCOMM Award Winners

Jonathan Postel's contributions to the Internet development, documentation and technical administration span 25 years. While obtaining his doctorate at UCLA in the early 1970s, Jon contributed to the definition of the protocols and performance measurement of the early ARPANET. Jon contributed to the design of many protocols for the Internet, and wrote many of the basic protocol specifications - for IP, TCP, UDP, Telnet, SMTP, and FTP. While at SRI during the late 1970s, Jon jointly did pioneering work in data representation and remote procedure calls.

Jon is most widely known as the editor of the Request for Comments or "RFC" series, since the early 1970s. The RFCs, which originally formed a series of technical documents and working notes within the ARPA-funded network research community, are still the official publication channel for Internet documents and standards. The technical and editorial quality of the RFCs is a reflection of Jon's influence.

Throughout the history of the Internet, since the start of the ARPANET, Jon has performed a critical function, that of administrator and registrar. Jon has managed the assignment and publication of numbers for networks and protocols, a task requiring creativity, tenacity and credibility. Jon has performed this task selflessly for over 25 years, providing stability and fairness during a time of enormous change.

The success of the Internet owes a large debt to Jon Postel for his unique and vital contribution to the development and specification of the main protocols, the documentation of the protocols, and Internet technical administration.

Louis Pouzin is best known for his work as the inventor and advocate of "Datagrams", later extended and renamed connectionless communication, as the basic mode for the transmission of packets in a network. His ideas in this area paved the way for a new thread of thought on how to manage resources in networks, resulting in several major innovations, including today's ATM networks.

At the Institut de Recherche d'Informatique et d'Automatique (IRIA) in France in the 1970s, Louis directed the Cyclades project, which pioneered many networking concepts. During this period, Louis was a strong focal point for cooperation between research and industry, between Europe and North America, and between the computer community, the datacom community and the more traditional telecommunications community.

Louis has influenced many in the data and computer communication community either through direct relationships or through the many lectures, conferences and classes he has given for many years all around the world, as well as his numerous publications. Louis served as a popular ACM lecturer for many years, and in the early 1990s served as Dean of Information Technology at THESEUS, a France Telecom institute providing MBA training for managers, with emphasis on information technology and network strategy. Louis' deep understanding of technical matters and how they combine with economic and/or political forces, his sometimes provocative way of questioning the politically correct evolution of our industry and his great sense of humor have characterized a lifetime contribution to the field.