Rick Adams
Richard (Rick) Adams was the founder of UUNET, which in the 1990s was the world's largest Internet Service Provider ISP. He was also the founder of ISC. [1]
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| Country: | USA |
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| Facebook: |  [UUNET Technologies Page Rick Adams]
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Professional Achievements
Rick Adams was responsible for making Internet widely accessible through the implementation of the first Serial Line IP (SLIP) on a world-wide level and of the foundation of UUNET Communication Services. In 1982 he was the first to run an e-mail link to a machine at the Center for Seismic Studies in Northern Virginia. He was also in charge of B News, the most popular Usenet News transport from that time. [2] He is also one of the founders of ISC or Internet Systems Consortium, Inc. next to Carl Malamud and Paul Vixie. ISC was developed with UUNET funding to develop and support a number of internet software reference implementations.[3]
History
Adams founded UUNET Communications Service as a nonprofit telecommunications company with the main purpose to reduce the cost of mail and Usenet traffic sent by UUCP, especially by the rural sites in America. (The necessary money for the funding of UUNET were obtained through a $50,000 loan from the USENIX Association. The loan was later repaid.) UUNET quickly bemcame the official gateway between North America and Europe, and the connection between UUCP mail and Internet email. [4]
UUNET Technology, the first ISP in the US, was also build by Adams. The company was build by the acquisition of the assets of UUNET Communication services, the latter receiving a share of the profits. UUNET Technology, became a company worth billions of dollars and was sold in 1995 to MFS (Metropolitan Fiber Systems), in 1996 being acquired by Worldcom, a main competitor for the biggest telecommunication companies from America.[5]
Rick left UUNET in 1994 and the company was taken over by John Sidgmore. After UUNET, Rick became a partner in other businesses such as 2941 restaurant in Virginia. Another notable experience is the donation he made in 1996, of one million US dollars to James Randi Educational Foundation to be used for the paranormal Million Dollar Challenge.
Rick Adams and ICANN
Among other notable collaborations, ISC and ICANN also collaborated on the DNS, "F" root server (the first server distributed using anycast).[6]