Robert Braden (28 January 1934 – 15 April 2018) was an American computer scientist who played a role in the development of the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

. His research interests included end-to-end

network protocols A communication protocol is a system of rules that allows two or more entities of a communications system to transmit information via any kind of variation of a physical quantity. The protocol defines the rules, syntax, semantics and synchroniza ...

, especially in the

transport Transport (in British English), or transportation (in American English), is the intentional movement of humans, animals, and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, land ( rail and road), water, cable, pipelin ...

and

network layer In the seven-layer OSI model of computer networking, the network layer is layer 3. The network layer is responsible for packet forwarding including routing through intermediate routers. Functions The network layer provides the means of tran ...

Career

Braden received a Bachelor of Engineering Physics from

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

in 1957, and a Master of Science in

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

from Stanford University in 1962. After graduating, he worked at Stanford and Carnegie Mellon University. He taught programming and operating systems courses at Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and also

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...

, where he moved next. He remained at UCLA for 18 years, 16 of them at the campus computing center. He spent 1981–1982 at the Computer Science Department of

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

. While there, he wrote the first relay system connecting the Internet with the

U.K. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

academic

X.25 X.25 is an ITU-T standard protocol suite for packet-switched data communication in wide area networks (WAN). It was originally defined by the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (CCITT, now ITU-T) in a series of drafts ...

network. He joined the networking research group at the

Information Sciences Institute The USC Information Sciences Institute (ISI) is a component of the University of Southern California (USC) Viterbi School of Engineering, and specializes in research and development in information processing, computing, and communications techn ...

(ISI) in 1986, and was a project leader in the Computer Networks Division. He was named an ISI Fellow in 2001.“Two veteran researchers win highest ISI honors”
, ISI press release. April 13, 2001.

Professional contributions

While at UCLA, Braden was responsible for attaching UCLA's IBM 360/91 supercomputer to the

ARPAnet The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical fou ...

, beginning in 1970. He was active in the ARPAnet Network Working Group, contributing to the design of the

File Transfer Protocol The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and dat ...

in particular. In 1978, he became a member of the Internet Working Group, which developed

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suit ...

, and began development of a TCP/IP implementation for UCLA's IBM system. The UCLA IBM software was distributed to other

OS/MVS Multiple Virtual Storage, more commonly called MVS, was the most commonly used operating system on the System/370 and System/390 IBM mainframe computers. IBM developed MVS, along with OS/VS1 and SVS, as a successor to OS/360. It is unrelated ...

sites, and was later sold commercially. In 1981, he was invited to join the Internet Configuration Control Board, the organization that later became the

Internet Architecture Board The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) is "a committee of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and an advisory body of the Internet Society (ISOC). Its responsibilities include architectural oversight of IETF activities, Internet Standards ...

(IAB). He later served for 13 years as a member of the IAB. Braden had been a member of the

Internet Engineering Task Force The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster or requirements and a ...

and the

Internet Research Task Force The Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) is an organization, overseen by the Internet Architecture Board, that focuses on longer-term research issues related to the Internet. A parallel organization, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), fo ...

since their inception. When IAB task forces were formed in 1986, he created the End-to-End Task Force, later known as the IRTF End-to-End Research Group, which he chaired and later ran as a networking community mailing list for a number of years. Among his many contributions during this period are: * Editing the Host Requirements RFCs * Developing the Resource Reservation Protocol * Developing

T/TCP T/TCP (Transactional Transmission Control Protocol) was a variant of the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). It was an experimental TCP extension for efficient transaction-oriented (request/response) service. It was developed to fill the gap betwe ...

* Serving as co-editor of the

Request for Comments A Request for Comments (RFC) is a publication in a series from the principal technical development and standards-setting bodies for the Internet, most prominently the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). An RFC is authored by individuals or g ...

(RFC) series. * Serving with the

Internet Assigned Numbers Authority The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is a standards organization that oversees global IP address allocation, autonomous system number allocation, root zone management in the Domain Name System (DNS), media types, and other Inte ...

* Coordinating the

DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Ad ...

research network DARTnet Braden was a Fellow of the ACM.

External links

Carl Malamud interviews Bob Braden
Internet Talk Radio, 29 September 1993
Oral history interview with Robert Braden

Charles Babbage Institute The IT History Society (ITHS) is an organization that supports the history and scholarship of information technology by encouraging, fostering, and facilitating archival and historical research. Formerly known as the Charles Babbage Foundation, ...

, University of Minnesota
Obituary sent to the IETF mailing list

Sources

* Gary Malkin, ''Who's Who in the Internet: Biographies of IAB, IESG and IRSG Members'' * RFC Editor, et al., ''30 Years of RFCs''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Braden, Bob 1934 births 2018 deaths American computer scientists Cornell University College of Engineering alumni Academics of University College London Internet pioneers Year of introduction missing