Bill Fenner

Current

• Member of Technical Staff at Arista Networks

Past

• src, ports committer at The FreeBSD Project
• Principal Member of Technical Staff at AT&T Labs - Research
• Routing Area Director at IETF

• Member of Research Staff at Xerox PARC
• Network Researcher at ITT

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2 more...

Education

• Pennsylvania State University

Connections

239 connections

Industry

Computer Networking

Websites

• My Website
• My Blog
• My Company

Bill Fenner’s Summary

I've been fascinated by networking ever since I started using the Internet in 1989. At heart, I'm a generalist, from UNIX system administrator to protocol junkie, no matter the layer -- be it SMTP, HTTP, Atom, BGP, ARP, ...

I'm also fascinated by network monitoring. Ever since the first time I ran tcpdump, I knew that the network is *not* doing what you think it's doing. IP is so incredibly robust it will work despite massive problems, which users may not even notice. Being able to proactively find these "invisible" problems is an ongoing quest.

I've been active in the Internet Engineering Task Force since 1993. I co-chaired the idmr and magma working groups, and was Routing Area director from 2002-2007. I also work on the tools team and help liaise with IANA and the RFC Editor.

I've authored the following RFCs:

2236 Internet Group Management Protocol, Version 2.
2435 RTP Payload Format for JPEG-compressed Video.
2525 Known TCP Implementation Problems.
2710 Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) for IPv6.
2934 Protocol Independent Multicast MIB for IPv4.
3228 IANA Considerations for IPv4 Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP).
3376 Internet Group Management Protocol, Version 3.
3618 Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP).
3678 Socket Interface Extensions for Multicast Source Filters.
4113 Management Information Base for the User Datagram Protocol (UDP).
4601 Protocol Independent Multicast - Sparse Mode (PIM-SM): Protocol Specification (Revised).
4605 Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) / Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD)-Based Multicast Forwarding ("IGMP/MLD Proxying").
4624 Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP) MIB.
4727 Experimental Values In IPv4, IPv6, ICMPv4, ICMPv6, UDP, and TCP Headers.
4794 RFC 1264 Is Obsolete.
4940 IANA Considerations for OSPF.

I co-authored an update of Richard Stevens' classic, "UNIX Network Programming, Volume 1, 3rd Edition" in 2003.

Bill Fenner’s Specialties:

Protocol design, Protocol implementation, Network diagnostics

Bill Fenner’s Experience

• Member of Technical Staff

  Arista Networks

  (Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Networking industry)

  November 2007 — Present (1 year 9 months)

• src, ports committer

  The FreeBSD Project

  (Computer Networking industry)

  1995 — 2007 (12 years)

• Principal Member of Technical Staff

  AT&T Labs - Research

  (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; T; Telecommunications industry)

  March 1999 — November 2007 (8 years 9 months)

• Routing Area Director

  IETF

  (Non-Profit; 1001-5000 employees; Internet industry)

  2002 — March 2007 (5 years)

  I spent 5 years as part of the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) - the management organization for the IETF. While there, I focused on improving communication between the IESG and Working Groups via tools and procedures.
  
  I heartily believe that the IESG role is one that, due to the incessant demands, can burn out even the best of person. I declined to stand for re-nomination in 2006-2007 because I realized that I had lost the WG-Chair viewpoint that I wanted to bring to the IESG and had become, to some extent, just another part of the machine.

• Member of Research Staff

  Xerox PARC

  (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; XRX; Information Technology and Services industry)

  July 1995 — February 1999 (3 years 8 months)

  Maintained mrouted and the MBone; helped document IGMPv2, design PIM and IGMPv3.

• Network Researcher

  ITT

  (Computer Networking industry)

  1993 — 1995 (2 years)

Bill Fenner’s Education

• Pennsylvania State University

  1989 — 1993

Additional Information

Bill Fenner’s Websites:

• My Website
• My Blog
• My Company

Bill Fenner’s Interests:

Network Management, IP Routing

Bill Fenner’s Groups:

IETF, NANOG, FreeBSD, MacPorts, OpenDarwin

•    NANOG - The North American Network Operators' Group
•    AT&T Alumni
•    IETF - The Internet Engineering Task Force
•    PARC: Palo Alto Research Center (was "Xerox PARC")
•    pcapr by Mu Dynamics

Bill Fenner’s Honors:

IETF Routing Area Director, 2001-2007
Patent awarded—"Method and system of monitoring the receipt of multicast traffic", 2007

Bill Fenner’s Contact Settings

Interested In:

• getting back in touch