Brian Edward Carpenter (born 30 May 1946) is a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

Internet engineer and a former chair 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 ...

(IETF), 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), and the

Internet Society The Internet Society (ISOC) is an American nonprofit advocacy organization founded in 1992 with local chapters around the world. Its mission is "to promote the open development, evolution, and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people ...

Early life and education

Carpenter was born in Leicester, England, and was educated at the

Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys was a grammar school in Leicester, England, in existence from 1876 to 1976. It was succeeded by the present-day Wyggeston and Queen Elizabeth I College. History After William Wyggeston's death in 1536, his bro ...

in Leicester. He earned a master's degree 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

Downing College Downing College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge and currently has around 650 students. Founded in 1800, it was the only college to be added to Cambridge University between 1596 and 1869, and is often described as the olde ...

Cambridge University The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III of England, Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world' ...

, and MSc and PhD degrees in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includi ...

from

The University of Manchester , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univer ...

Professional career

Carpenter spent 25 years, from 1971 to 1996, working at the

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

an Laboratory for

Particle Physics Particle physics or high energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and forces that constitute matter and radiation. The fundamental particles in the universe are classified in the Standard Model as fermions (matter particles) an ...

( CERN). He initially wrote software for process control systems and later served as the head of the networking group from 1985 to 1996, working alongside

Robert Cailliau Robert Cailliau (, born 26 January 1947) is a Belgian informatics engineer, computer scientist and author who proposed the first (pre-www) hypertext system for CERN in 1987 and collaborated with Tim Berners-Lee on the World Wide Web (jointly wi ...

and Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...

. He took three years off of his CERN career to teach undergraduate computer science at Massey University in

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

. When Carpenter left CERN, he joined IBM, where he was an IBM Distinguished Engineer working on Internet Standards and Technology between 1997 and 2007. From 1999 to 2001 he was at iCAIR, international Center for Advanced Internet Research, sponsored by IBM at

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

Evanston, Illinois Evanston ( ) is a city, suburb of Chicago. Located in Cook County, Illinois, United States, it is situated on the North Shore along Lake Michigan. Evanston is north of Downtown Chicago, bordered by Chicago to the south, Skokie to the west, ...

. Upon leaving iCAIR, he was based in Switzerland, first in Zurich, then

Geneva , neighboring_municipalities= Carouge, Chêne-Bougeries, Cologny, Lancy, Grand-Saconnex, Pregny-Chambésy, Vernier, Veyrier , website = https://www.geneve.ch/ Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevr ...

. In September 2007, Carpenter left IBM for academia, teaching

data communication Data transmission and data reception or, more broadly, data communication or digital communications is the transfer and reception of data in the form of a digital bitstream or a digitized analog signal transmitted over a point-to-point or ...

at the

University of Auckland , mottoeng = By natural ability and hard work , established = 1883; years ago , endowment = NZD $293 million (31 December 2021) , budget = NZD $1.281 billion (31 December 2021) , chancellor = Cecilia Tarrant , vice_chancellor = Dawn F ...

, from 2007 until his retirement in 2012. After his retirement, he spent a year as a

visiting professor In academia, a visiting scholar, visiting researcher, visiting fellow, visiting lecturer, or visiting professor is a scholar from an institution who visits a host university to teach, lecture, or perform research on a topic for which the visitor ...

at the Computer Laboratory of

. Since then he has been an honorary academic at The

and a consultant for Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. In 2013, Carpenter published a professional memoir called ''Network Geeks: How They Built the Internet''.

Contributions to Internet technology

Carpenter's research interests include

Internet protocols 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 ...

, especially the networking and routing layers. He is also interested in the

history of computing The history of computing is longer than the history of computing hardware and modern computing technology and includes the history of methods intended for pen and paper or for chalk and slate, with or without the aid of tables. Concrete devices ...

. Carpenter has worked on

IPv6 Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. IPv ...

and on differentiated services and served as the DiffServ working group chair. He served from March 1994 to March 2002 on the

, which he chaired for five years. He edited the Request For Comments 1958, an important memo on the Architectural Principles of the Internet He also served as a Trustee of the

, and was Chairman of its Board of Trustees for two years until June 2002. In March 2005, he became IETF Chair, a position he held until March 2007.

Selected publications

* * ''AM Turing's ACE Report of 1946 and Other Papers'', Vol. 10 of

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, ...

Reprint Series for the History of Computing, B.E. Carpenter, R.W. Doran (eds),

MIT Press The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962. History The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publish ...

, 1986. * * "Turing’s Zeitgeist", B.E. Carpenter, R.W. Doran, Chapter 22 in ''

The Turing Guide ''The Turing Guide'', written by Jack Copeland, Jonathan Bowen, Mark Sprevak, Robin Wilson, and others and published in 2017, is a book about the work and life of the British mathematician, philosopher, and early computer scientist, Alan Turi ...

'', Jack Copeland et al. (eds.), ,

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

, 2017, pp 223–231.

References

External links

Brian Carpenter home page
at

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Carpenter, Brian 1946 births Living people People from Leicester People educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys Alumni of Downing College, Cambridge English engineers English computer scientists Internet Society people British expatriates in New Zealand Massey University faculty University of Auckland faculty People associated with CERN IBM Research computer scientists Members of the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory