Harald Tveit Alvestrand (born 29 June 1959) is a

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (a ...

. He was 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 an ...

(IETF) from 2001 until 2005, succeeding Fred Baker. Within the IETF, Alvestrand was earlier the chair of the Areas for Applications from 1995 until 1997, and of Operations and Management in 1998.

Biography

Alvestrand was born in Namsos,

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of ...

, received his education from

Bergen Cathedral School Bergen Cathedral School ( Norwegian: ''Bergen Katedralskole'', Latin: ''Schola Cathedralis Bergensis'', formerly known as Bergens lærdeskole and Bergen latinskole and colloquially known as Katten) is an upper secondary school in Bergen, Norway. Lo ...

and the

Norwegian Institute of Technology The Norwegian Institute of Technology ( Norwegian: ''Norges tekniske høgskole'', NTH) was a science institute in Trondheim, Norway. It was established in 1910, and existed as an independent technical university for 58 years, after which it was ...

, and has worked for Norsk Data, UNINETT, EDB Maxware,

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, ...

, and

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

. He is an author of several important

Request for Comments A Request for Comments (RFC) is a publication in a series from the principal technical development and standards-setting bodies for the Internet, most prominently the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). An RFC is authored by individuals or g ...

(RFCs), many in the general area of

Internationalization and localization In computing, internationalization and localization (American) or internationalisation and localisation (British English), often abbreviated i18n and L10n, are means of adapting computer software to different languages, regional peculiarities and ...

, most notable the documents required for interoperability between

SMTP The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an Internet standard communication protocol for electronic mail transmission. Mail servers and other message transfer agents use SMTP to send and receive mail messages. User-level email clients ty ...

and

X.400 X.400 is a suite of ITU-T Recommendations that defines the ITU-T Message Handling System (MHS). At one time, the designers of X.400 were expecting it to be the predominant form of email, but this role has been taken by the SMTP-based Internet e- ...

. Since the start of the use of OIDs he has run a front end to the hierarchy of assignments according to X.208. At the end of 2007 Alvestrand was selected for the

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 ...

Board, where he remained until December 2010. In 2001 he became a member of the Unicode Board of Directors. He was a co-chair of the IETF EAI and USEFOR WGs. Harald Alvestrand was the executive director of the Linux Counter organization. He was a member of the

Norid Norid AS is the registry for the Norwegian country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) .no (Norway), .sj (Svalbard and Jan Mayen) and . bv (Bouvet Island). By agreement with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, Norid is delegated the exclusive a ...

Board, and the RFC Independent Submissions Editorial Board. he lived in

Trondheim Trondheim ( , , ; sma, Tråante), historically Kaupangen, Nidaros and Trondhjem (), is a city and municipality in Trøndelag county, Norway. As of 2020, it had a population of 205,332, was the third most populous municipality in Norway, an ...

, and has been working for

since 2006.

Publications

Best Current Practices

* (BCP 15) Deployment of the Internet White Pages Service * (BCP 18) IETF Policy on Character Sets and Languages * (BCP 26) Guidelines for Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs * (BCP 27) Advancement of MIB specifications on the IETF Standards Track * Tags for the Identification of Languages ''(was BCP 47)'' * (BCP 92) The IESG and RFC Editor Documents: Procedures * (BCP 95) A Mission Statement for the IETF

Other important RFCs

* X.400 Use of Extended Character Sets * ''(this memo prepared the

UTF-8 UTF-8 is a variable-length character encoding used for electronic communication. Defined by the Unicode Standard, the name is derived from ''Unicode'' (or ''Universal Coded Character Set'') ''Transformation Format 8-bit''. UTF-8 is capable of e ...

50-years plan in RFC 2277)'' * Mapping between X.400 and RFC-822/MIME Message Bodies * Content Language Headers ''(draft standard)'' * Getting Rid of the Cruft ''(major RFC cleanup work)'' * A Generalized Unified Character Code: Western European and CJK Sections (with John Klensin) ''

April 1 Events Pre-1600 * 33 – According to one historian's account, Jesus Christ's Last Supper is held. * 527 – Byzantine Emperor Justin I names his nephew Justinian I as co-ruler and successor to the throne. *1081 – Alexios I Ko ...

, 2008''

References

External links

*
Biography
at

{{DEFAULTSORT:Alvestrand, Harald Tveit 1959 births Living people Google employees People from Namsos Scientists from Trondheim Norwegian computer scientists Norsk Data people Chairpersons of non-governmental organizations Norwegian Institute of Technology alumni Scientists from Bergen Cisco people