Paul Mockapetris biography
Date of birth : 1948-11-18
Date of death : -
Birthplace : Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Nationality : American
Category : Science and Technology
Last modified : 2011-12-19
Credited as : Inventor, inventor of the Domain Name System, IEEE Internet Award
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In 1983, he proposed a Domain Name System (DNS) architecture in RFCs 882 and 883 while at the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) of the University of Southern California.
He had recognized the problem in the early Internet (then ARPAnet) of holding name to address translations in a single table on a single host, and instead proposed a distributed and dynamic DNS database: essentially DNS as we have it today. Together with Jon Postel, he is acknowledged as the inventor of DNS.
In 2009, Mockapetris-headed company Nominum proposed for the implementation of highly disputed Internet censorship systems in Germany, that technically are based on DNS interceptions.
According to Paul Mockapetris, In 2009, he was accused by ZDnet of supporting censorship in Germany. In fact, Paul never spoke with the reporter and would never have taken a position on a new German child-pornography law. Mockapetris is Chairman of Nominum, Inc., a company which supplies DNS software to the world's leading network carriers.
Mockapetris received the 1997 John C. Dvorak Telecommunications Excellence Award "Personal Achievement - Network Engineering" for DNS design and implementation, the 2003 IEEE Internet Award for his contributions to DNS, and the Distinguished Alumnus award from the University of California, Irvine.
In May 2005 he received the ACM Sigcomm lifetime award.
