Louis Pouzin (April 20, 1931 in Chantenay-Saint-Imbert,

Nièvre Nièvre () is a department in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region, central-east France. Named after the river Nièvre, it had a population of 204,452 in 2019.packet Packet may refer to: * A small container or pouch ** Packet (container), a small single use container ** Cigarette packet ** Sugar packet * Network packet, a formatted unit of data carried by a packet-mode computer network * Packet radio, a form ...

communications network,

CYCLADES The Cyclades (; el, Κυκλάδες, ) are an island group in the Aegean Sea, southeast of mainland Greece and a former administrative prefecture of Greece. They are one of the island groups which constitute the Aegean archipelago. The nam ...

. This network was the first actual implementation of the pure

datagram A datagram is a basic transfer unit associated with a packet-switched network. Datagrams are typically structured in header and payload sections. Datagrams provide a connectionless communication service across a packet-switched network. The del ...

model, initially conceived and described by

Donald Davies Donald Watts Davies, (7 June 1924 – 28 May 2000) was a Welsh computer scientist who was employed at the UK National Physical Laboratory (NPL). In 1965 he conceived of packet switching, which is today the dominant basis for data communic ...

, subsequently named by

Halvor Bothner-By Halvor Bothner-By (August 20, 1938 - June 13, 2014) was a telecommunication engineer of the Norwegian Telecommunications Administration. He was a rapporteur on packet switching for the CCITT. As such, he chaired the group that, in March 1975, pr ...

, and seen by Louis Pouzin as his personal invention. His work, and that of his colleagues Hubert Zimmerman and

Gérard Le Lann Gérard Le Lann is a French computer scientist at INRIA. In networking, he worked on the project CYCLADES with an intermediate stint on the Arpanet team. Life and career Gérard Le Lann's career has been summarized in 1975 as follows: ::Gé ...

, were acknowledged by

Vinton Cerf Vinton Gray Cerf (; born June 23, 1943) is an American Internet pioneer and is recognized as one of " the fathers of the Internet", sharing this title with TCP/IP co-developer Bob Kahn. He has received honorary degrees and awards that include ...

as substantial contributions to the design of

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 ...

, the protocol suite used by 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 ...

Biography

He studied at the

École Polytechnique École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Savoi ...

from 1950 to 1952. Having participated in the design of the

Compatible Time-Sharing System The Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) was the first general purpose time-sharing operating system. Compatible Time Sharing referred to time sharing which was compatible with batch processing; it could offer both time sharing and batch proces ...

(CTSS) at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

, Pouzin wrote a program for it called

RUNCOM RUNCOM is a CTSS macro command (script) processor. History Louis Pouzin created RUNCOM for CTSS circa 1963. He wrote a paper in 1965 describing a design for the Multics shell which includes a brief description of RUNCOM followed by a second p ...

around 1963–64. RUNCOM permitted the execution of commands contained within a folder and can be considered the ancestor of the command-line interface and

shell script A shell script is a computer program designed to be run by a Unix shell, a command-line interpreter. The various dialects of shell scripts are considered to be scripting languages. Typical operations performed by shell scripts include file manip ...

s. Pouzin was the one who coined the term ''

shell Shell may refer to: Architecture and design * Shell (structure), a thin structure ** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses ** Thin-shell structure Science Biology * Seashell, a hard o ...

'' for a command language interpreter separate from the

kernel Kernel may refer to: Computing * Kernel (operating system), the central component of most operating systems * Kernel (image processing), a matrix used for image convolution * Compute kernel, in GPGPU programming * Kernel method, in machine learnin ...

in 1964 or 1965. Pouzin's concepts were later implemented in

Multics Multics ("Multiplexed Information and Computing Service") is an influential early time-sharing operating system based on the concept of a single-level memory.Dennis M. Ritchie, "The Evolution of the Unix Time-sharing System", Communications of t ...

Glenda Schroeder Glenda Schroeder is an American software engineer noted for implementing the first command-line user interface shell and publishing one of the earliest research papers describing electronic mail systems while working as a member of the staff at th ...

at MIT. Schroeder developed the first Multics shell with the assistance of an unnamed man from

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable energ ...

. Schroeder's Multics shell was the predecessor to the

Unix shell A Unix shell is a command-line Interpreter (computing), interpreter or shell (computing), shell that provides a command line user interface for Unix-like operating systems. The shell is both an interactive command language and a scripting langua ...

, which is still in use today. Working with Glenda Schroeder and Pat Crisman, he also described an early

e-mail Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

system called "MAIL" to allow users on the CTSS to send notifications to others about backups of files. Each user's messages would be added to a local file called "MAIL BOX", which would have a “private” mode so that only the owner could read or delete messages. The proposed uses of the proto-email system were for communication from CTSS to notify users that files had been backed up, discussion between authors of CTSS commands, and communication from command authors to the CTSS manual editor. The service only made it possible to leave messages for the other users on the same computer. The idea to allow users to send messages between computers was developed later by

Ray Tomlinson Raymond Samuel Tomlinson (April 23, 1941 – March 5, 2016) was an American computer programmer who implemented the first email program on the ARPANET system, the precursor to the Internet, in 1971; It was the first system able to send mail be ...

in 1971. From 1967 to 1969 Pouzin developed one operating system for

Météo-France Météo-France is the French national meteorological service. Organisation The organisation was established by decree in June 1993 and is a department of the Ministry of Transportation. It is headquartered in Paris but many domestic operatio ...

, the French national meteorological service, using

CDC 6400 The CDC 6000 series is a discontinued family of mainframe computers manufactured by Control Data Corporation in the 1960s. It consisted of the CDC 6200, CDC 6300, CDC 6400, CDC 6500, CDC 6600 and CDC 6700 computers, which were all extremely rapid a ...

as hardware. This system was created for weather forecast and statistics and was used for 15 years. Pouzin directed the pioneering

networking project from 1971 to 1976. Building on

’s simulation of

networks, Pouzin built the CIGALE packet switching network. CYCLADES used a layered architecture, as did the Internet later, to research

internetworking Internetworking is the practice of interconnecting multiple computer networks, such that any pair of hosts in the connected networks can exchange messages irrespective of their hardware-level networking technology. The resulting system of interc ...

concepts. He participated in the

International Networking Working Group The International Networking Working Group (INWG) was a group of prominent computer science researchers in the 1970s who studied and developed standards and protocols for computer networking. Set up in 1972 as an informal group to consider the tec ...

from 1972, initially chaired by

Vint Cerf Vinton Gray Cerf (; born June 23, 1943) is an American Internet pioneer and is recognized as one of " the fathers of the Internet", sharing this title with TCP/IP co-developer Bob Kahn. He has received honorary degrees and awards that include t ...

. He was acknowledged by

Bob Kahn Robert Elliot Kahn (born December 23, 1938) is an American electrical engineer who, along with Vint Cerf, first proposed the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP), the fundamental communication protocols at the hea ...

and Cerf in their seminal 1974 paper on internetworking protocols, ''"A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication"''. In 2002 Pouzin, along with Jean-Louis Grangé, Jean-Pierre Henninot and Jean-François Morfin, participated in the creation of Eurolinc, which is a non-profit association that promotes multilingualism in

domain names A domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. As ...

. In June 2003, Eurolinc was accredited by UNO to participate at the

World Summit on the Information Society The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was a two-phase United Nations-sponsored summit on information, communication and, in broad terms, the information society that took place in 2003 in Geneva and in 2005 in Tunis. WSIS Forums have ...

(WSIS). In November 2011, he founded Savoir-Faire, an alternative root company, with Chantal Lebrument and Quentin Perrigueur. In 2012 he developed a service called Open-Root, which is dedicated to sell

top-level domain A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in ...

s (TLD) in all scripts outside of

ICANN The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN ) is an American multistakeholder group and nonprofit organization responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several databases related to the namespaces ...

. This way people can develop

second-level domain In the Domain Name System (DNS) hierarchy, a second-level domain (SLD or 2LD) is a domain that is directly below a top-level domain (TLD). For example, in , is the second-level domain of the TLD. Second-level domains commonly refer to the organ ...

s for free.

Awards

*1997 – Pouzin received the ACM SIGCOMM Award for "pioneering work on connectionless packet communication"."Postel and Pouzin: 1997 SIGCOMM Award Winners"
ACM SIGCOMM web site *2003 – Louis Pouzin was named a

Chevalier of the Legion of Honor The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon B ...

by the French government on March 19, 2003.https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000037909697&categorieLien=id *2012 – Pouzin 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.

by 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 ...

. *2013 – Pouzin was one of five Internet and Web pioneers awarded the inaugural

Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering The Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, also known as the QEPrize, is a global prize for engineering and innovation. The prize was launched in 2012 by a cross-party group consisting of David Cameron, Nick Clegg, and Ed Miliband, then Prime M ...

. *2016 – Pouzin received the Global IT Award."Louis Pouzin"
Global IT Award. *2018 – Pouzin is promoted

Officer of the Legion of Honor The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon B ...

References

External links

Louis Pouzin: a major Internet figure
INRIA {{DEFAULTSORT:Pouzin, Louis École Polytechnique alumni French computer scientists 1931 births Living people Internet pioneers Chevaliers of the Légion d'honneur

Biography

Awards

See also

References

Further reading

External links