Daniel Karrenberg
lorenetworking
German network engineer who helped build EUnet, wrote the report that argued Europe should run TCP/IP, co-founded RIPE, and in 1992 set up the world's first regional internet registry - intending to be finished with the internet a year later.
A network administrator at Dortmund from 1981, he helped set up EUnet the following year and joined the Amsterdam team in 1987, where he built the links to the American network and wrote the report arguing that European networking should run on TCP/IP rather than the standards the continent's institutions preferred - one of the decisions on which everything since depended. In 1989 he co-founded RIPE, the forum where European operators coordinate, and in April 1992 he set up the RIPE NCC, the first regional internet registry in the world, the body that has handed out Europe's addresses ever since; the four other registries copied the model. His own account of the plan is the best part: he meant to establish the registry and, by April 1993, be done with the internet and move on to something interesting, and instead ran it until 2000 and served as its chief scientist until 2013, building the measurement systems - the routing information service, the Atlas probes, the DNS monitors - through which the internet's operators observe the internet. Inducted in the Hall of Fame's first class in 2012, he used the speech to say the point of a hall of fame was to name the people who actually built the thing before the history books were written, and pledged to push for it. The entries around this one are, in part, that pledge kept.
Also known as: karrenberg, ripe ncc, first regional internet registry, ripe atlas
Sources
- RIPE NCC: Karrenberg helped build EUnet in the 1980s, co-founded RIPE in 1989, and in the 1990s led the formation of the world's first Regional Internet Registry, serving Europe, the Middle East and initially parts of Africa and Central Asia; chief executive from 1992 to 2000 and chief scientist from 2000 to 2013, leading the Routing Information Service, RIPE Atlas, DNSMON, RIPEstat and, with NLnet Labs, the NSD name server
- Wikipedia: born 1959 in Düsseldorf; network administrator at TU Dortmund from 1981 to 1987; helped set up EUnet in 1982; at CWI from 1987 to 1992, where he helped build the European hub with links to NSFNET; co-founded RIPE in 1989 and was instrumental in founding the RIPE NCC in 1992
- His 2012 Internet Hall of Fame induction speech: in April 1992 he had a firm plan to set up the first regional internet registry and, by April 1993, to be done with the internet and move on to the next interesting thing; the thing took off and he has been riding the rocket since; he pledged to push for recognition of the people who actually built the internet before the history books are written
- Wikipedia, Teus Hagen: Karrenberg wrote the report in favour of TCP/IP for global networking in Europe