Phil Karn (born October 4, 1956) is a retired American engineer from
Lutherville, Maryland
Lutherville is a census-designated place (CDP) in Baltimore County, Maryland, United States. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 6,504. Prior to 2010 the area was part of the Lutherville-Timonium CDP. Within its borders lies the Luther ...
. He earned a bachelor's degree in
electrical engineering
Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...
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 teach an ...
in 1978 and a master's degree in electrical engineering from
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...
in 1979.
From 1979 until 1984, Karn worked at
Bell Labs
Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984),
then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996)
and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007),
is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...
in
Naperville, Illinois
Naperville ( ) is a city in DuPage County, Illinois, DuPage and Will County, Illinois, Will counties in the U.S. state of Illinois. It is in the Chicago metro area, west of the city.
Naperville was founded in 1831 by Joseph Naper. The city was ...
, and
Murray Hill, New Jersey
Murray Hill is an unincorporated community located within portions of both Berkeley Heights and New Providence, located in Union County in northern New Jersey, United States.
It is the longtime central location of Bell Labs (part of Nokia si ...
. From 1984 until 1991, he was with
Bell Communications Research
iconectiv is a supplier of network planning and network management services to telecommunications providers. Known as Bellcore after its establishment in the United States in 1983 as part of the break-up of the Bell System, the company's name ...
in
.
From 1991 through to his retirement, he worked at
Qualcomm
Qualcomm () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software, and services related to wireless technology. It owns patents critical to the 5G, 4 ...
in
San Diego
San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...
, where he specialized in wireless data networking protocols, security, and cryptography.
He is currently the President/CEO o
Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) a non-profit foundation funded by the sale of part of its IP address space (44/8). ARDC manages the remaining portion of its address space by providing financial grants to amateur radio and related groups.
He has been an active contributor in 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 ...
, especially in security, and to 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 ...
architecture. He is the author or co-author of at least 6
RFCs, and is cited as contributing to many more. He is the inventor of
Karn's Algorithm, a method for calculating the round trip time for IP packet retransmission. In 1991, Thomas Alexander Iannelli's Master's thesis judged Karn's
KA9Q KA9Q, also called KA9Q NOS or simply NOS, was a popular early implementation of TCP/IP and associated protocols for amateur packet radio systems and smaller personal computers connected via serial lines. It was named after the amateur radio calls ...
NOS software as more suitable for deployment than an Air Force Institute of Technology packet radio system. In 1990, Karn was one of the first to predict that the use of wired links for the Internet's "capillaries" would become "history" because most users would access it via wireless radio links.
In 1994, Carl Malamud interviewed Karn on Internet Talk Radio for his "Geek of the Week" podcast. They talked about the KA9Q software, Qualcomm's CDMA radio technology for data transfer, the
Globalstar
Globalstar, Inc. is an American satellite communications company that operates a low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation for satellite phone and low-speed data communications. The Globalstar second-generation constellation consists of 24 l ...
low Earth orbit
A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit around Earth with a period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial objects in outer space are in LEO, with an altitude never mor ...
satellite radio system,
Mobile IP
Mobile IP (or MIP) is an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard communications protocol that is designed to allow mobile device users to move from one network to another while maintaining a permanent IP address. Mobile IP for IPv4 is des ...
, the
Clipper chip
The Clipper chip was a chipset that was developed and promoted by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) as an encryption device that secured "voice and data messages" with a built-in backdoor that was intended to "allow Federal, State, ...
, and encryption. In June 2014, Karn was also interviewed for the History of the Internet Project, in which he described his contribution to the effort to reboot the 1978 International Sun/Earth Explorer-3 (
ISEE-3
The International Cometary Explorer (ICE) spacecraft (designed and launched as the International Sun-Earth Explorer-3 (ISEE-3) satellite), was launched 12 August 1978, into a heliocentric orbit. It was one of three spacecraft, along with the m ...
) spacecraft. The ISEE-3 is also known as the International Cometary Explorer.
He is well known in the
amateur radio
Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, is the use of the radio frequency spectrum for purposes of non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, private recreation, radiosport, contesting, and emergency communic ...
community for his work on the
KA9Q KA9Q, also called KA9Q NOS or simply NOS, was a popular early implementation of TCP/IP and associated protocols for amateur packet radio systems and smaller personal computers connected via serial lines. It was named after the amateur radio calls ...
Network Operating System
A network operating system (NOS) is a specialized operating system for a network device such as a router, switch or firewall.
Historically operating systems with networking capabilities were described as network operating systems, because they al ...
(NOS), named after his amateur
callsign
In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally assigne ...
. He also created early 9600 bit/s
FSK FSK may refer to:
* FSK (band), a German band
* Federal Counterintelligence Service, (Russian ') of Russia
* Fiskerton railway station, in England
* Forskolin, a diterpene
* Forsvarets Spesialkommando, a Norwegian special forces unit
* Fort Scott M ...
radio modems. In the early 2000's, Karn worked to introduce
forward error correction
In computing, telecommunication, information theory, and coding theory, an error correction code, sometimes error correcting code, (ECC) is used for controlling errors in data over unreliable or noisy communication channels. The central idea is ...
into
Amateur radio satellite
An amateur radio satellite is an artificial satellite built and used by amateur radio operators. It forms part of the Amateur-satellite service. These satellites use amateur radio frequency allocations to facilitate communication between amate ...
s, applying it to the 400 bit/s
PSK telemetry from the
AO-40
AMSAT-OSCAR-40, also known as AO-40 or simply OSCAR 40,
was the on-orbit designation of an amateur radio satellite of the OSCAR series. Prior to launch, the spacecraft was known as Phase 3D or "P3D". AO-40 was built by AMSAT.
AO-40's project ...
satellite. He won the 1989 Specific Achievement Award at the
Dayton Hamvention
The Dayton Hamvention is one of the two largest amateur radio convention (or hamfest) in the world. It is held each May in the Dayton, Ohio area and draws attendees from various parts of the world. Since 2017, it has been held at the Greene County ...
.
Crypto export lawsuit
In 1994, the US State Department Office of Defense Trade Control ruled that while it was legal to export
Bruce Schneier
Bruce Schneier (; born January 15, 1963) is an American cryptographer, computer security professional, privacy specialist, and writer. Schneier is a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Cente ...
's "Applied Cryptography" book under the rules for munitions export, it was illegal to export the source code in the book on electronic media such as a
floppy disk
A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...
. [The case was tried in Washington D.C. Federal District Court (1996) and the judge handed down a summary judgment in favor of the State Department. He ruled.that the book and it contents were free to be exported, protected by free speech and press rights. The floppy disk, however, was a tool or instrument designed to produce functioning products (e.g. an encrypted computer) and as such was subject to the controls of the Export Control Act. <
>
Karn challenged this ruling, both in the courts and in testimony before Congress[ for two years] until Bill Clinton dropped almost all export controls on freely available crypto source code on January 14, 2000; The judge mooted the case, .
References
http://www.loundy.com/CASES/Karn_v_US.html
Sources
* : Self-published or questionable sources: http://www.ka9q.net/ is subject's personal web page.
External links
Phil Karn's personal webpages
FEC Encoding for AO-40 Telemetry
Phil Karn's profile on Quora
{{DEFAULTSORT:Karn, Phil
Living people
Amateur radio people
Packet radio
Cypherpunks
Cornell University College of Engineering alumni
Carnegie Mellon University College of Engineering alumni
People from Baltimore
1956 births