Dr Jonathon Postel
Until his death in 1998 aged 55, he was also the founder and director of IANA. Its no exaggeration to say that Postel was one of a handful and technically gifted men who helped to create the Internet.
He worked on the ARPANET which was the Internets forerunner, with a special interest in computer communication protocols and multi machine internet applications. It was Postel who worked on the software that connected hosts to the ARPANET packet switch to route network traffic.
Postel main claim to fame was the establishing of IANA, a body which acted as the central co-ordination , allocation and registration organisation for addresses, names and protocol parameters on the Internet.
IANA was critical in the administration of the Internet, assigning and managing the unique names and numbering of the Domain Name System.
Without Postel's work the Net could not have grown at the rate it did, and could not have developed into the globally important communications medium it is today.
