Teus Hagen
lorenetworking
Dutch computer scientist who ran the networking team at Amsterdam's Mathematical Centre and in 1982 started EUnet, the first public wide-area network in Europe, as a dial-up service of the Unix user group he chaired.
He ran the Computer Laboratory's small networking team at the Mathematical Centre - Akkerhuis, Beertema, McKie and Karrenberg - and that team is why Amsterdam became the junction of European networking before the internet reached it. Hagen founded the Dutch Unix user group and then the European one, chaired the European group through the whole decade from 1980, and in 1982 started EUnet as its dial-up service: store-and-forward mail and news over UUCP between four countries at first, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden, with the Dutch node at the institute. It was the first public wide-area network in Europe, and it grew to a thousand sites in twenty-one countries by 1989 - a working continental network built by a user group, on telephone lines, before any of the official research networks that were supposed to provide one. It was one of his own people who wrote the report arguing that Europe should adopt TCP/IP, and the institute that opened the first connection to the American network in 1988. From 1992 to 2008 he chaired NLnet, which grew out of EUnet into the first Dutch ISP and now funds free internet research; the Hall of Fame inducted him in 2013. The pattern is the volunteer one: the network that connected Europe first was nobody's job.
Also known as: hagen, eunet, euug, nluug
Sources
- NLnet: Hagen began at the Computer Laboratory of the Mathematical Centre, later CWI, which became the centre of European computer networks, and led the small team that did most of the networking - Jaap Akkerhuis, Piet Beertema, Jim McKie and Daniel Karrenberg; he initiated the Dutch and European Unix user groups, chaired the European group from 1980 to 1989, and in 1982 started EUnet as its dial-up service - the first public wide area network, with four initial backbones - which by 1989 had 1,000 sites in 21 countries; he chaired the NLnet Foundation from 1992 to 2008 and helped it become the first Dutch ISP; inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2013
- Wikipedia: one of his team members, Daniel Karrenberg, wrote the report in favour of TCP/IP for European networking; from 1992 to 2008 Hagen was chairman and director at NLnet, which funds free internet research; from 2004 he served on the board of the community certificate authority CAcert and as its president in 2008
- News2mail on EUnet: the European Unix Network, run under the European Unix Users Group, dates to 1982 and the first international UUCP links between the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden; the Dutch node sat at CWI, and the institute's machine mcvax was the junction through which a great deal of European mail and news passed to and from the United States