![]() ![]() I think that I shall never see a graph more lovely than a tree.Ī tree whose crucial property is loop-free connectivity.Ī tree that must be sure to span so packets can reach every LAN. The poem, Perlman's first, could serve as a "Spanning Tree for Dummies," and was the abstract of the paper in which Perlman published the spanning tree algorithm: Perlman's daughter, Dawn, an amateur opera singer, even performed it at a recital. Her ode to the spanning tree algorithm, titled "Algorhyme," is a geek favorite and has even been set to music, thanks to her son, Ray. "I can summarize it in a poem!" Poem? Yep, the woman who has made large contributions to many areas of network design and standardization is also a poet. "The protocol is really very simple," Perlman said. Her protocol transformed Ethernet from a technology that could only work with a few nodes over a limited distance, into something that could create fairly large networks. The achievement that has made Perlman a household name in certain cerebral circles is the spanning tree algorithm, which she invented in 1985 while working for the now-defunct Digital Equipment Corporation. That's only the short list for the daughter of engineering-grounded parents.Ĭreator of the spanning tree algorithm (and poem) One of three recipients of the inaugural Women of Vision Award from the Anita Borg Institute. An honorary doctorate from the Royal Institute of Technology of Sweden. Named Silicon Valley Inventor of the Year by an intellectual property law association. ![]() Lauded as one of the 20 most influential people in the tech industry by Data Communications magazine. SIGCOMM lifetime achievement award and similar honor from the advanced computing systems association USENIX. ![]() Not helping her cause is a Wikipedia entry that references the maternal moniker in the opening sentence.īut also noted are her myriad accomplishments and honors: I mostly don't even think about gender."Ĭoined by a publication whose name she forgets - hence, "thingy" - the cringe-worthy nickname is probably something she's stuck with. Also, being called 'Mother of the Internet' is a little strange in that it emphasizes gender. Many people had large roles, including, actually, Al Gore, and in a sense it was something that was inevitable. "It's overreaching because I don't think any single individual deserves credit for inventing the Internet. The reason Perlman winces at the label is "it's a title that one has no clear way of getting, unlike, for example, a Ph.D.," said Perlman, who earned hers in computer science from MIT in 1988. One reason they thought they could get away with it is because several people claim being the 'Father of the Internet,' and 'Mother of the Internet' wasn't already staked out." I didn't see the article in advance, and it kinda stuck. "I was interviewed for some thingy or other, and the writer came up with that. ![]() "'Mother of the Internet.' I did not come up with that," Perlman said. Call her a mother of two, but don't call her "Mother of the Internet." Engineer, author, inventor and, since March, Intel's director of Network and Security Technology, Radia Perlman never cottoned to the label despite its use nearly every time she speaks at a technical conference or is written about in a story (including this one, her first interview since leaving Sun Microsystems). ![]()
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