ISOC, 2015 Jonathan B. Postel Service Award Goes To Rob Blokzijl

The Internet Society has awarded the Jonathan B. Postel Service Award to Rob Blokzijl, Ph.D. for his tireless labor and over 25 years as the Founding Member, and Retired Chair (retired in May 2014) at (Réseaux IP Européens] aka RIPE. That work coupled with the critically important labor of assisting other European policy makers, engineers and scientists to spread the Internet across Europe informed the selection of Dr. Blokzijl!.

'During the 1980s, Dr. Blokzijl was active in building networks for the particle physics community in Europe. Through his experience at the National Institute for Nuclear and High Energy Physics (NIKHEF) and CERN, he recognized the power of collaborating with others building networks for research and travelled worldwide to promote cooperation across networkers. In the 1990s, Dr. Blokzijl was influential in the creation of the Amsterdam Internet Exchange, one of the first in Europe. His most widely recognized contribution is as founding member and 25-year chairman of RIPE, the European open forum for IP networking. Dr. Blokzijl was also instrumental in the creation of RIPE NCC in 1992, the first Regional Internet Registry in the world.' - via the Internet Society

Nominations for the ISOC Jonathon B. Postel Service Award Opened

ISOC (Internet Society) has announced the annual Call for Nominations, for the organizations' 2015 Jonathan B. Postel Service Award (with a deadline of May 15th, 2015). Presentation of the award at IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) #93. IETF 93 is slated for Sunday, 19 Jul 2015 through and inclusive of Friday, 24 Jul 2015 in stunningly beautiful Prague, Czech Republic.

Learn more about Jonathan Postel, Ph.D. whom Vinton Grey Cerf, Ph.D. once characterized thusly:

"Jon has been our North Star for decades ... He was the Internet's Boswell and its technical conscience." - Vinton Cerf, Ph.D.

Quotes

"It's perfectly appropriate to be upset. I thought of it in a slightly different way--like a space that we were exploring and, in the early days, we figured out this consistent path through the space: IP, TCP, and so on. What's been happening over the last few years is that the IETF is filling the rest of the space with every alternative approach, not necessarily any better. Every possible alternative is now being written down. And it's not useful." Jon Postel, Ph.D. (1)

(1) Richard Comerford. State of the Internet: Roundtable 4.0. IEEE Spectrum 35(10):69 - 79, October 1998.