Michael John Muuss (October 16, 1958 – November 20, 2000) was the American author of the

freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the f ...

network tool

ping Ping may refer to: Arts and entertainment Fictional characters * Ping, a domesticated Chinese duck in the illustrated book '' The Story about Ping'', first published in 1933 * Ping, a minor character in ''Seinfeld'', an NBC sitcom * Ping, a c ...

Career

A graduate of

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...

, Muuss was a senior scientist specializing in geometric

solid modeling Solid modeling (or solid modelling) is a consistent set of principles for mathematical and computer modeling of three-dimensional shapes '' (solids)''. Solid modeling is distinguished from related areas of geometric modeling and computer graphi ...

, ray-tracing,

MIMD In computing, multiple instruction, multiple data (MIMD) is a technique employed to achieve parallelism. Machines using MIMD have a number of processors that function asynchronously and independently. At any time, different processors may be exe ...

architectures and digital

computer networks A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are m ...

at the United States

Army Research Laboratory The U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Army Research Laboratory (DEVCOM ARL) is the U.S. Army's foundational research laboratory. ARL is headquartered at the Adelphi Laboratory Center (ALC) in Adelphi, Maryland. Its largest sing ...

Aberdeen Proving Ground Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG) (sometimes erroneously called Aberdeen Proving ''Grounds'') is a U.S. Army facility located adjacent to Aberdeen, Harford County, Maryland, United States. More than 7,500 civilians and 5,000 military personnel work at ...

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...

when he died. He wrote a number of software packages (including

BRL-CAD BRL-CAD is a constructive solid geometry (CSG) solid modeling computer-aided design (CAD) system. It includes an interactive geometry editor, ray tracing support for graphics rendering and geometric analysis, computer network distributed frame ...

) and network tools (including

ttcp The program ttcp (Test TCP) is a utility for measuring network throughput, popular on Unix systems. It measures the network throughput between two systems using the TCP or optionally UDP protocols. It was written by Mike Muuss and Terry Slat ...

and the concept of the

default route In computer networking, the default route is a configuration of the Internet Protocol (IP) that establishes a forwarding rule for packets when no specific address of a next-hop host is available from the routing table or other routing mechanisms ...

or "default gateway") and contributed to many others (including

BIND BIND () is a suite of software for interacting with the Domain Name System (DNS). Its most prominent component, named (pronounced ''name-dee'': , short for ''name daemon''), performs both of the main DNS server roles, acting as an authoritative ...

). However, the thousand-line ping, which he wrote in December 1983 while working at the

Ballistic Research Laboratory The Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL) was a leading U.S. Army research establishment situated at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland that specialized in ballistics ( interior, exterior, and terminal) as well as vulnerability and lethality analysis. ...

, is the program for which he is most remembered. Due to its usefulness, ping has been implemented on a large number of

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 ...

, initially Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) and

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

, but later others including

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

and

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

. In 1993, the USENIX Association gave a Lifetime Achievement Award (''Flame'') to the Computer Systems Research Group at

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, honoring 180 individuals, including Muuss, who contributed to the CSRG's 4.4BSD-Lite release. Muuss is mentioned in two books, ''

The Cuckoo's Egg ''The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage'' is a 1989 book written by Clifford Stoll. It is his first-person account of the hunt for a computer hacker who broke into a computer at the Lawrence Berkeley National ...

'' () and ''Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier'' (), for his role in tracking down crackers. He is also mentioned in

Peter Salus Peter Henry Salus is a linguist, computer scientist, historian of technology, author in many fields, and an editor of books and journals. He has conducted research in germanistics, language acquisition, and computer languages. Education and ...

's ''A Quarter Century of UNIX'' and a link to his website’s ping page is included in ''How Linux Works'' (). Muuss died in an automobile collision on

Interstate 95 Interstate 95 (I-95) is the main north–south Interstate Highway on the East Coast of the United States, running from U.S. Route 1, US Route 1 (US 1) in Miami, Miami, Florida, to the Houlton–Woodstock Border Crossing between M ...

on November 20, 2000. The Michael J. Muuss Research Award, set up by friends and family of Muuss, memorializes him at

References

External links

Mike Muuss's home page

ICMP As A Diagnostic Tool?
An Early UseNet Post by Mike Muuss Discussing Ping's history
BRL-CAD
{{DEFAULTSORT:Muuss, Mike 1958 births 2000 deaths People from Iowa City, Iowa Road incident deaths in Maryland Johns Hopkins University alumni American computer programmers

Career

See also

References

External links