Jon Postel dies

Over 30 of you wrote in to tell us that Jon Postel, died of complications after heart surgery at the age of 55. For those who don't know who Postel, he's the DNS admin (as head of the IANA), controlling the root name server setup and being a guiding force in the current government domain name wrangling. He was the voice of reason against many of the government's less-than-intelligent proposals for restructuring DNS. He was also editor of most of the 2500 RFCs.

His PhD thesis adviser and his friend Vint Cerf sum up the feelings of the Internet community in this DejaNews post. The New York Times' obituary is here. You can also find an interview with Jon Postel from July. His homepage is simple and to the point.

I'd like to thank Idcmp, Claude Johnson, and Jeff Garzik whose material was used to compile this report.