Head Of Internet Domain-Names Group Dies

By KATE GERWIG

For 30 years, Jon Postel was a key player in the Internet's development. Last Friday he died at age 55 in California following surgery to correct a heart problem.

Postel created the Internet addressing system and was a computer scientist iat the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California in Marina del Rey.

The soft-spoken enigma who managed the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and the .us domain name also has been a key figure in the debate over how best to take the Internet Domain Name System (DNS) private. According to the Internet Society, of which Postel was a founding member, Postel was talking about several things, including some IANA-related business to a long-term colleague the day he died.

Internet Architecture Board member Bob Braden said, "It was easy to overlook or underestimate Jon's contribution. He did not give riveting speeches. Lots and lots of very bright people contributed ideas and words to the Internet protocol suite, but it was Jon Postel who spun out the final words that define the Internet." Braden added that Postel was passionately dedicated to the Internet and "hated it when people said or did stupid or destructive things."

In 1969 while a graduate student at UCLA working on the ArpaNet project as a research assistant, Postel organized and edited the first series of technical documents known as the "Request for Comments" that helped set the Internet's first standards. Postel was the one-person staff of the IANA, which oversees the allocation and assignment of domain names and Internet addresses, for many years. He also was a member of the Internet Architecture Board from its inception in 1983

In 1996, Postel was elected to the Board of Trustees of the Internet Society and wrote one of the original proposals to migrate the government-funded IANA and the DNS to a non-profit, international private sector operation. Recently the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was incorporated and has been proposed as the successor tot he government system. The U.S. Department of Commerce is currently reviewing his proposal, as is Clinton Administration Internet advisor Ira Magaziner.

Last year Postel conducted a test of the Internet's reliability and rerouted the network's directory service to alternate locations. There was no disruption of the Internet's operation, but the incident attracted attention and generated fears that Postel had too much control and was trying to "hijack" the Internet. Postel said he was trying to demonstrate the network's backup ability.

Postel obtained a master's degree in engineering in 1968 and a doctorate in computer science in 1974 from UCLA.