50 on Power's edge, 12/25/00

By ANN SULLIVAN
Network World, 12/25/00

Standards superstars

John Klensin

Pamela Samuelson

Steve Bellovin
AT&T fellow, AT&T Labs Research; chairman, ICMP Traceback Working Group of the Internet Engineering Task Force

While eBay, Amazon.com and other high-profile sites may not have seen February's distributed denial-of-service attacks coming, Internet security expert Bellovin predicted they would happen. These days, he's working on a project that might help combat such attacks. Bellovin is chairman of an Internet Engineering Task Force working group that is studying ways to trace the path of packets through the Internet, even when the source IP is forged. The group plans to submit a proposal for Internet Control Message Protocol Traceback Messages in January.

Tim Berners-Lee
Director, World Wide Web Consortium

The inventor of the Web presses on. He runs the W3C, which continues to drive Web standards in such areas as XML, privacy and accessibility. Berners-Lee chronicles the Web's creation, its evolution, his take on its potential and what the future holds in his book, Weaving the Web.

Vinton Cerf
Senior vice president of Internet architecture and technology, WorldCom

Not content to rest on his TCP/IP laurels, Cerf continues to improve the Internet framework he helped create. He is replacing Esther Dyson as chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Cerf weighed in on the Carnivore debate in September, testifying that the FBI's controversial surveillance system is not "technically abusive." On the side, he acts as technical adviser for the television show "Gene Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict." One thing he told the Industry Standard he wished he had invented? Teleportation. Perhaps in his spare time.

Scott Goldman
CEO, WAP Forum

Airwaves have long been a passion of Goldman, who in college aspired to be a radio disc jockey. Nicknamed the Wireless Wizard, Goldman has built a career researching, designing, operating and selling paging, cellular and wireless data services around the world. Some of that interest apparently stems from a childhood obsession with wires. In an excerpt from his book, Ask the Wireless Wizard, Goldman writes: "I hate wires. Ever since I was a kid, I've hidden them, buried them and stuffed them underneath carpets. They're unmanageable, easy to trip over and make your house, desk and car look like a spaghetti factory hit by a hurricane."

Today he heads the WAP Forum, the industry association responsible for the Wireless Application Protocol. Among the group's controversial decisions: The next version of the WAP application - due out midyear 2001 - will support Extensible HTML, rather than Wireless Markup Language.

John Klensin
Chairman, Internet Architecture Board

Klensin is one dedicated volunteer. As the IAB chairman, the strategic planning arm of the IETF, he coordinates the group's agenda, activities and external relationships in between the demands of his real job as Internet architecture president at AT&T. Among the IAB's agenda items are IPv6 and Internet addressing issues. How does he do it all? Thirty years' experience in Internet research and protocol development certainly helps. Klensin helped design the Internet's original file transfer and e-mail systems in the 1960s.

Pamela Samuelson
Professor, University of California at Berkeley; co-director, Berkeley Center for Law and Technology

An expert on cyberlaw and intellectual property, this Berkeley professor teaches at the university's law school and the School of Information Management & Systems. But her drive is to get the public voice heard. When the doors of her brainchild, the Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic open in January, she'll be taking a big step. The clinic will be a watchdog over issues such as Internet surveillance, free speech restrictions, governmental access to confidential files and censoring Internet access in public institutions. Her technology influence extends beyond Berkeley. With husband Robert Glushko, a director at Commerce One, Samuelson established a four-year scholarship for women pursuing science or technology degrees at the University of Washington.

The rest of the 50 on Power's edge

Main story

Amazing analysts

Enterprise paragons

Infrastructure bedrocks

Security stars

Service provider bravos

Software saviors

Carrier infrastructure czars

Industry watchdogs