Researchers from the Imagining the Internet Center recorded acceptance speeches at a ceremony hosted by the Internet Society in San José, Costa Rica, September 27, 2019.
Use the video viewer to see 2019 inductees’ acceptance speeches. Click on the first video to begin a player that will cycle through several or click on those you wish to view.
September 27, 2019 – The fifth induction of honorees to the Internet Society’s Internet Hall of Fame took place at a special event in San José, Costa Rica.
The Hall of Fame class of 2019 includes 11 Internet leaders who were selected because of their impact, influence, innovation and the reach of their contributions. They were chosen for this honor by an Internet Hall of Fame Advisory Board after an open nominations period. Eight of the inductees were present in-person for the ceremony.
The continual advancement of the Internet is made possible by thousands of individuals. Those inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame have had some significant impact on the advancement of the Internet; many have been leaders in the ongoing development of the Internet and many continue to contribute.
This year’s inductees are Adiel Akplogan, Kimberly Claffy, Douglas Earl Comer, Elise Gerich, Larry Irving, Dan Lynch, Jean Armor Polly, José Soriano, Michael Stanton, Klaas Wierenga and Suguru Yamaguchi. You can read more details about each inductee below.
Inductees:
Adiel Akplogan (Togo) advanced the Internet in Africa and is founding CEO of the Regional Internet Registry for Africa. He has been instrumental in increasing Internet network penetration across Africa.
An electrical engineer by training, between 1996 and 1997 Akplogan helped establish the country’s first TCP/IP connection in his native country of Togo.
He began actively sharing his networking knowledge with many African colleagues, offering training and support in the region’s Internet deployment and expansion and connecting them to international organizations that would aid in this effort. He played a key role in the development of several of the first West African ISPs (Internet Service Providers).
As a member of the Technical Advisory Group of the United Nations’ Economic Commission for Africa, he also helped define the Internet development strategy for several African countries, including Guinea, Cape Verde, Cote d’Ivoire, Togo, Benin and Burkina Faso.
By 2003, Akplogan had helped start AFRINIC (African Network Information Centre), Africa’s first Regional Internet Registry (RIR). He went on to serve as its first CEO, a position he held until 2015. As CEO of AFRINIC, he was also active within the global Internet number registry community where he played a leading role, alongside his RIR peers, to advance the Number Resource Organization and its engagement with the global technical community.
Under Akplogan’s guidance, AFRINIC was central to the development of the early African Internet ecosystem; it established a shared vision for the network’s development on the continent, and helped build a strong community around that vision. As a result, in the years that followed, African Internet penetration flourished.
At the time of his induction he is serving as the vice president for technical engagement at ICANN, and he remains active in regional Internet development activities across Africa.
Kimberly “kc” Claffy (United States) pioneered the field of Internet data collection, measurement and analysis. She has helped the global scientific research community better understand the Internet and how it is used. In addition to conducting her own research, she has developed infrastructure and methodologies for large-scale Internet data collection, analysis and distribution around the world.
In 1992 Claffy published the first of many papers on Internet traffic measurement and analysis. In 1997 she founded the Center for Applied Data Analysis (CAIDA) at the University of California’s San Diego Supercomputer Center. CAIDA has become known as the oldest and most recognizable research institution for global Internet measurement and analysis. It has ensured widespread access to Internet measurement data, and, by doing so, it has informed disciplines ranging from network science and operations to political science and public policy.
The organization first focused on data that informed the technical community, but CAIDA now also examines the economic and policy context that defines the Internet ecosystem. This includes analysis of attributes of the Internet related to infrastructure security and stability, the mutual interdependence of architecture and policy, and the ethics of information technology research.
At the time of her induction, Claffy continues to serve as CAIDA’s director. She is also a resident research scientist at the San Diego Supercomputer Center at UCSD, and serves as an adjunct professor in its computer science and engineering department.
She was not at events in San José, Costa Rica, during the induction but appeared via video.
Douglas Earl Comer (United States) developed the first series of textbooks on the Internet’s design and protocols. As one of the earliest TCP/IP and internetworking researchers, he was perfectly positioned to explain the scientific principles underlying the design of the Internet and its communications protocols, providing some of the earliest formal guidance for building efficient networks and applications that use the Internet.
Comer’s three-volume textbook series Internetworking with TCP/IP, written in 1987, is widely considered to be the authoritative reference for Internet protocols. The series played a key role in popularizing the protocols by making them more understandable to a new generation of engineers and IT professionals.
Prior to Comer’s books, which have been translated into over 16 languages and are still widely used in academia and by networking professionals around the world, the only source of information about the Internet’s design and protocols was limited to standards documents, which only outlined individual protocols. Comer’s books went beyond this to explain, critically, how protocols work together.
In addition, Comer has taught Internet principles, protocols, and architecture to thousands of engineers and IT staff. He also pioneered the use of tunneling, now widely used to send IP over a high-level protocol, and created an early network that supplied Internet connections years before the availability of ISPs (Internet Service Providers), the National Science Foundation backbone (NSFNET) and regional networks.
Elise Gerich (United States) was instrumental in the transition of the NSFNET to the modern-day Internet and in the transition of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority functions from the stewardship of the U.S. government to a multistakeholder community with ICANN.
From 1987 to 1996 she was actively involved in the deployment of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) NSFNET, which promoted advanced networking in the U.S. and became the network model for the commercial Internet.
As a project systems manager at the Merit Network in 1987, Gerich oversaw the expansion of the NSFNET’s T-1 backbone, which a year earlier had become the principal backbone of the Internet.
Merit served as the organization lead for the contract with the NSF in a partnership that also included IBM, MCI and the State of Michigan. Gerich successfully coordinated and fostered collaboration among these and many other stakeholders – including managers from regional networks throughout the U.S. – to ensure the network’s smooth redesign and deployment. In addition to fostering collaboration throughout the U.S., she created a program to qualify international research and education network connectivity to NSFNET.
She also oversaw the network’s difficult 1991 migration to the T-3 backbone, successfully coordinating operations and engineering efforts to troubleshoot the backbone’s technical issues. She later became co-principal investigator for the following NSF Awards: T-3 NSFNET Backbone, Routing Arbiter Services and Multi-threaded Distributed Routing Architecture.
In 1995, at the end of the NSFNET contract, she oversaw the retirement of the NSFNET backbone and the transition of its connections to commercial Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
Following her early efforts to enable regional network operators to collaborate, Gerich co-founded the first North American Network Operator’s Group (NANOG). This subsequently inspired the creation of similar NOGs around the world. They now enable network operators to stay abreast of new networking technology.
In 1996, she began working for Excite@Home Network, one of the earliest high-speed cable ISPs, where she led the rollout of the first Internet-over-Cable infrastructure for more than 20 cable providers, sparking widespread high-speed network access in U.S., Canada, Europe and Japan.
In 2010, Gerich assumed responsibility for the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) function at ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), an iconic role once held by the legendary Jon Postel.
In this capacity, she was instrumental in the historic 2016 transfer of Internet control from the U.S. government to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, an independent, international community responsible for the administration of the Internet’s unique names, numbers and parameters.
Larry Irving (United States) produced the first empirical study proving the existence of the “Digital Divide.” This groundbreaking research sparked global efforts to begin bridging the divide and it continues to be widely cited today by those studying Internet access around the world.
As the assistant secretary of commerce for communications and information and administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) during the Clinton Administration, Irving helped establish some of the earliest and most foundational U.S. domestic and international Internet policies, including those supporting universal Internet access, private investment, competition, open access and “light touch” regulation.
As part of this work, in 1993, he initiated hearings across the U.S. to identify opportunities and obstacles affecting development of the nascent Internet.
He subsequently commissioned a comprehensive Census Bureau survey that quantified for the first time the U.S. communities and populations that didn’t have Internet access and diagnosed some of the causes. This research was documented in a seminal series of reports he co-authored, Falling Through the Net.
This research showed that Americans most at-risk for access inequity were communities that couldn’t afford to fall further behind, including the following: rural; low-income; single parents; the elderly; those for whom English was a second language; and others who were otherwise economically or educationally disadvantaged or geographically distant.
Irving’s data helped provide support for legislative initiatives such as the E-Rate program and, in conjunction with NTIA’s Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program (TIIAP), it also demonstrated the growing importance of the Internet for all communities. TIIAP connected schools, libraries, hospitals and other public-access institutions where at-risk communities could access the web for free.
But Irving didn’t stop at connectivity. He understood that access alone wouldn’t help at-risk communities realize the Internet’s full potential: the NTIA also made provisions to provide hardware and training for Internet usage, and support for the creation of digital content relevant to those communities.
Irving ensured that the data sets, which set the international standard for researching connectivity, were open to the public, and encouraged exploration of them by academics and researchers.
His work ignited global concern about the Digital Divide phenomenon, leading to international regulatory and legislative reforms and programs to promote Internet growth.
Dan Lynch (United States) helped drive adoption of TCP/IP protocols and played a key role in successfully moving the Internet past being a tool of the scientific community into its development as a commercial network.
As a developer, researcher and evangelist of TCP/IP, Lynch played a key role in driving global adoption of these protocols and fueling the Internet’s commercial success, public visibility and use.
In the 1970s, as director of computing facilities at SRI International, Lynch ran the data center where the second ARPANET node was located. While there, he performed initial development of the TCP/IP protocols in conjunction with Bolt, Beranek and Newman.
He subsequently joined the University of California’s Information Sciences Institute as director of the Information Processing Division, where he led the ARPANET team that made the transition from the original Network Control Program protocols to TCP/IP from 1980 until 1983.
During this period, while serving on the Internet Activities Board (now the Internet Architecture Board), he launched an effort to track TCP/IP implementation on the ARPANET, which significantly propelled U.S. TCP/IP adoption and ultimately enabled the launch of the Internet, on January 1, 1983.
As part of his work with the International Networking Group, he contributed to the testing of the Packet Radio and Packet Satellite networks that were part of the original three-network Internet.
After the Internet’s launch, Lynch founded INTEROP, which played a dominant role in demonstrating the commercial viability of the Internet’s design and trained thousands on the design, implementation and operation of Internet-enabled equipment.
It was at INTEROP where the first router vendors demonstrated product TCP/IP functionality and interoperability. The first computer makers followed suit, and INTEROP spread to Europe and Asia, giving the Internet even greater global visibility.
Lynch went on to found CyberCash, one of the earliest online payment services for e-commerce.
He was not at induction events in Costa Rica but appeared via video. The photo included with this biography was taken at an INTEROP event several years ago.
Jean Armour Polly (United States) was one of the first U.S. librarians to offer computer and Internet access to the public, transforming public library service and redefining the role of the librarian as a digital educator and Internet advocate.
In 1981, Polly began offering computer access to the public at the Liverpool Public Library in upstate New York. At the time, it was one of only two public libraries in the U.S. to do so.
By 1992, recognizing the potential impact of free public Internet access, Polly connected her computer lab to the nascent network, establishing one of the earliest instances of public access Internet and launching a movement to include Internet as a core library service.
She then co-founded PUBLIB, the first online listserv for public librarians worldwide to discuss Internet policy, pitfalls, use and opportunities associated with public libraries. She challenged librarians to shift their views of the Internet from threat to resource, and encouraged them to become active in shaping its evolution and reach.
She found many ways to share her knowledge with the broader public as well. In 1992, she wrote and published one of the first free, nontechnical public guides to the Internet, Surfing the Internet (Polly is often credited with coining the phrase). The guide became one of the most-respected resources on Internet use of its time.
By 1996, her willingness to share her knowledge of Internet navigation had earned her the nickname “Net-mom,” and she subsequently wrote the first encyclopedic directory of Internet resources for kids, Net-mom’s Internet Kids & Family Yellow Pages, championing kids’ web access and Internet safety. Logging six editions, including those for China and the UK, the book was an invaluable resource to parents and educators, and it sold over 250,000 copies worldwide
José Soriano (Peru) played a key role in bringing the Internet to Peru and was the primary architect and advocate of a “Public Internet Kiosk” model that has democratized network access so it could better reach underserved and non-Spanish-speaking Peruvians.
This model was declared by the World Bank as the most viable for developing countries. It was later adopted by El Salvador, Colombia, Uruguay, Togo and Mauritania.
Soriano’s initial career as a journalist coincided with the early proliferation of the Internet in the U.S. and Europe, and he quickly recognized the Internet’s potential to disseminate information and empower Peruvian citizens.
In 1991, he founded Red Cientifica Peruana (RCP), a non-profit organization established to develop the network in Peru in partnership with 43 civil society institutions. As RCP’s general coordinator from 1991 to 2000, he built a team of 70 engineers, administrators and instructors.
RCP, which became the first Internet Service Provider in Latin America, was conceived to bring Internet access to all Peruvians, and Soriano’s vision and leadership guided this idea.
He effectively advocated for a national initiative that developed the network independent of government and telecom interests, which could slow down or limit the network’s reach; he designed and deployed thousands of Public Internet Kiosks, so access was easy and inexpensive; and he emphasized the need for local trainers and content, to ensure that the Internet was more accessible and relevant to local communities.
Building on this commitment, in 1995 Soriano launched the first website in Quechua, the native language of the Incas, which is still spoken by almost 8 million (25%) Peruvians.
Soriano also served as a senior consultant for the Inter-American Development Bank, World Bank, United Nations Development Program and several national governments.
Michael Stanton (Brazil) prompted the Brazilian government to build the country’s first national research network after initiating a national conversation about the need for one, and he played a lead role in the team that created it.
In 1987, as chair of the computer science department at the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC/RJ), Stanton convened Brazilian researchers in computing, science and engineering, government officials and the state-owned telecommunications provider to discuss building a single national research network with access to the outside world.
In 1989, the government acted on the resulting prompts by launching a project to build the National Research Network, or RNP (now the National Education and Research Network), and in 1990 Stanton joined the coordination team that would ultimately bring the Internet to Brazil in 1992.
Stanton left RNP in 1993 to continue his work developing academic networks, including the optical metro network at the Fluminense Federal University in Niterói, RJ (UFF), but rejoined RNP in 2001 as director of innovation. In this role, he headed the team fostering the development of new application services and became active in designing and developing new networks, both for RNP in Brazil and for its international partners.
Among other projects, Stanton participated in the design, deployment and management of the RedCLARA regional network in Latin America, fostered since 2003 by the European Union, he helped the National Science Foundation link Brazil to the U.S. through its International Research Network Connections program, and he helped inspire the Amazon Connected program, which uses subfluvial cables in the rivers of the Amazon Basin to bring high-performance Internet to many Brazilians who previously lacked access.
He has also played a leading role in projects to build large-scale network testbeds, for exploring optical technologies (2003-2008) and also, beginning in 2011, to carry out research and development into the future of the Internet within Brazil and in concert with international partners.
At the time of his induction he continues to participate in the design and deployment of scalable optical networks in South America and around the world.
Klaas Wierenga (Netherlands) invented eduroam, which provides free, secure, international Wi-Fi roaming service to academic and research communities when they travel to participating institutions all over the world.
Available in over 100 countries on every continent, eduroam, has helped increase collaborative initiatives among universities and schools.
Wierenga started eduroam in 2002 while at SURFnet, the Netherlands’ National Research and Education Network (NREN), where he also built the first generation of federated identity systems.
Following a successful pilot, eduroam was adopted by GÉANT, the pan-European research and education network, as an international roaming service for academics and researchers.
Built on the most secure encryption and authentication standards in existence today, eduroam has empowered institutions to provide global access without globally centralized identity management.
Wierenga, who currently serves as chief community support officer at GÉANT, is the co-author of Building the Mobile Internet (Cisco Press, 2011) and Wireless Networking in the Developing World (2013), as well as three RFCs. He also holds five U.S. patents.
Suguru Yamaguchi (Japan), a cybersecurity research pioneer and global leader in its deployment, played an integral role in increasing the security of the Internet in Asia and around the world.
Yamaguchi was a founding member of the WIDE (Widely Integrated Distributed Environment) Project, which has been fostering network research and development activity since it established the first Japanese Internet backbone in 1988.
As an active board member, he also began researching network security systems for large-scale distributed computing environments.
In 1996, he founded the Asia Internet Interconnection Initiatives (AI3), an Asia-wide research effort to provide broadband Internet connectivity throughout Asia Pacific via satellite.
Through AI3, he helped build a satellite Internetwork for research and education communities in 13 Asia-Pacific countries, enabling greater academic collaboration and further development of the Internet in the region.
Yamaguchi’s passion for cybersecurity never waned, and he founded Japan’s first Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT), the Japanese Computer Emergency Response Team, or JPCERT, providing Japan with a critical single-point-of-contact entity that can effectively respond to cybersecurity incidents.
He also led the founding of APCERT (Asia Pacific Emergency Response Team), a regional forum for cooperation of CSIRTs across Asia Pacific, and played a key role in founding AfricaCERT, the African Forum of Computer Emergency Response Teams.
From 2011 to 2013, he served as a board member of FIRST.org, the leading global association of CSIRTs, where he helped expand the organization’s outreach and education program to developing countries.
He died in 2016 and was honored posthumously.
The Imagining the Internet Interview Team
The Imagining the Internet Center documentary video team working on this project included undergraduate researchers Anton Delgado, Maria Ramirez, Alexandra Roat and Jared Mayerson of Elon University’s School of Communications. Elon faculty who worked on this project were Alex Luchsinger and Janna Anderson.