Glenn Ricart is a computer scientist. He was influential in the development of the Internet (

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 ...

) going back to 1969 and early implementation of the TCP/IP protocol. Since then he has been active in technology and business as well as donating his time to philanthropic and educational movements.

Education

Ricart received his B.S. degree in engineering from Case Institute of Technology in 1971, and his M.S. in Computing and Information Sciences from

Case Western Reserve University Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is a private research university in Cleveland, Ohio. Case Western Reserve was established in 1967, when Western Reserve University, founded in 1826 and named for its location in the Connecticut Western Reser ...

in 1973. He received his doctorate in the University of Maryland Department of Computer Science, which is part of the

University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences The College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences (CMNS) at the University of Maryland, College Park, is home to ten academic departments and a dozen interdisciplinary research centers and institutes. CMNS is one of 13 schools and colleg ...

in 1980, mentored by Ashok Agrawala. The Ricart-Agrawala Algorithm was the result of his dissertation work at the

University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...

Career

Ricart set up what was probably the first

Internet Exchange Internet exchange points (IXes or IXPs) are common grounds of IP networking, allowing participant Internet service providers (ISPs) to exchange data destined for their respective networks. IXPs are generally located at places with preexisting ...

point, the FIX (Federal Internet Exchange) in

College Park, Maryland College Park is a city in Prince George's County, Maryland, United States, and is approximately four miles (6.4 km) from the northeast border of Washington, D.C. The population was 34,740 at the 2020 United States Census. It is best known a ...

which interconnected the original federal

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 ...

networks and was extended to form

MAE-East The MAE (later, MAE-East) was the first Internet Exchange Point (IXP). It began in 1992 with four locations in Washington, D.C., quickly extended to Vienna, Reston, and Ashburn, Virginia; and then subsequently to New York and Miami. Its name stoo ...

. Ricart led the team that wrote the code for the first implementation of TCP/IP for the IBM PC. He then secured financial support from IBM for writing the code, and, in addition to its free availability to the education community, arranged for IBM to sell it as IBM's entry into the field (the product was called PC/IP by IBM). He led the team that developed the

OSPF Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) is a routing protocol for Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It uses a link state routing (LSR) algorithm and falls into the group of interior gateway protocols (IGPs), operating within a single autonomous sys ...

reference implementation at the University of Maryland, including Louis Mamakos and Mike Petry. He also led the team that provided and operated the routers for the first

NSFNet The National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) was a program of coordinated, evolving projects sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) from 1985 to 1995 to promote advanced research and education networking in the United States. The p ...

backbone. From 1971 to 1982, he was a lead software engineer at the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

, developing the first e-mail program for the

TOPS-10 TOPS-10 System (''Timesharing / Total Operating System-10'') is a discontinued operating system from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) for the PDP-10 (or DECsystem-10) mainframe computer family. Launched in 1967, TOPS-10 evolved from the earlier ...

(

PDP-10 Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)'s PDP-10, later marketed as the DECsystem-10, is a mainframe computer family manufactured beginning in 1966 and discontinued in 1983. 1970s models and beyond were marketed under the DECsystem-10 name, especi ...

) operating system in 1973. From 1982–1993, he headed academic computing at the

. In 1984, it became the first campus to adopt

campus-wide and use it to connect all academic minicomputers and mainframes. In 1985 to 1989, he was instrumental in bringing 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 ...

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...

, helping to bring the first

BITNET BITNET was a co-operative U.S. university computer network founded in 1981 by Ira Fuchs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and Greydon Freeman at Yale University. The first network link was between CUNY and Yale. The name BITNET original ...

and Internet connections to

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

in partnership with

CNPq The Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq, pt, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, earlier ) is an organization of the Brazilian federal government under the Ministry of Scienc ...

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

via the

University of Buenos Aires The University of Buenos Aires ( es, Universidad de Buenos Aires, UBA) is a public university, public research university in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Established in 1821, it is the premier institution of higher learning in the country and one o ...

, and

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

by first connecting REUNA. He instructed the first networking workshop for Latin and South America (ESLARED) and several succeeding workshops. From 1993 to 1995, Ricart was a Program Manager at

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 Adv ...

for

operating systems An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also inc ...

middleware Middleware is a type of computer software that provides services to software applications beyond those available from the operating system. It can be described as "software glue". Middleware makes it easier for software developers to implement co ...

, and end-system security. From 1995 to 1999, he was chief technology officer at

Novell Novell, Inc. was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi-platform network operating system known as Novell NetWare. Under the lead ...

, helping to move that company from the proprietary

Xerox Network Systems Xerox Network Systems (XNS) is a computer networking protocol suite developed by Xerox within the Xerox Network Systems Architecture. It provided general purpose network communications, internetwork routing and packet delivery, and higher level f ...

protocol to also embrace

. In 1999, he co-founded CenterBeam, a start-up based on remote

system management Systems management refers to enterprise-wide administration of distributed systems including (and commonly in practice) computer systems. Systems management is strongly influenced by network management initiatives in telecommunications. The ap ...

driven by

directory services In computing, a directory service or name service maps the names of network resources to their respective network addresses. It is a shared information infrastructure for locating, managing, administering and organizing everyday items and network r ...

. From 2003 to 2009, he was the founding managing director of the

PricewaterhouseCoopers PricewaterhouseCoopers is an international professional services brand of firms, operating as partnerships under the PwC brand. It is the second-largest professional services network in the world and is considered one of the Big Four accounting ...

Center for Advanced Research based in

San Jose, California San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popul ...

. In October 2009 Ricart was named president and CEO of

National LambdaRail National LambdaRail (NLR) was a , high-speed national computer network owned and operated by the U.S. research and education community. In November 2011, the control of NLR was purchased from its university membership by a billionaire Patrick Soon ...

, the high-speed networking platform owned by the U.S. research and education community. On September 7, 2010 he announced his resignation from National LambdaRail due to strategic differences with the board. In 2010 he presented the

Bernard Price Memorial Lecture The Bernard Price Memorial Lecture is the premier annual lecture of the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers. It is of general scientific or engineering interest and is given by an invited guest, often from overseas, at several of the m ...

in South Africa. Ricart is a co-founder of US Ignite, a nonprofit organization launched in 2012 with support from the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

and numerous public and private stakeholders. US Ignite's mission is to foster the development of broadband-intensive applications with an eye toward "

smart city A smart city is a technologically modern urban area that uses different types of electronic methods and sensors to collect specific data. Information gained from that data is used to manage assets, resources and services efficiently; in return ...

" and other public good uses. He previously served on the boards of 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 ...

CACI CACI International Inc. (originally California Analysis Center, Inc., then Consolidated Analysis Center, Inc.) is an American multinational professional services and information technology company headquartered in Northern Virginia. CACI provi ...

, First USA Financial Services,

Santa Cruz Operation The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. (usually known as SCO, pronounced either as individual letters or as a word) was an American software company, based in Santa Cruz, California, that was best known for selling three Unix operating system variants ...

, and

NASULGC The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) is a research, policy, and advocacy organization of Public university, public Research university, research university, universities, land-grant university, land-grant institutions, stat ...

. He is the CTO of Artkick - a service that displays artwork on televisions.

Awards

In 2013, he was inducted into the

Internet Hall of Fame The Internet Hall of Fame is an honorary lifetime achievement award administered by the Internet Society (ISOC) in recognition of individuals who have made significant contributions to the development and advancement of the Internet.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ricart, Glenn People in information technology Living people Internet pioneers American chief technology officers Case Western Reserve University alumni University of Maryland, College Park alumni American technology chief executives Year of birth missing (living people)