John Klensin
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| Country: | USA | ||
| LinkedIn: |  John Klensin
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Dr. John C. Klensin is now an independent consultant following a distinguished career as the Internet Architecture Vice President at AT&T, distinguished engineering fellow at MCI WorldCom, and principal research scientist at MIT.[1] He is currently serving as the owner of John C. Klensin.[2]
He is an early pioneer of the Internet, and has been working on the underlying system and protocols for more than 4 decades.[3]
He served on the Internet Architecture Board from 1996-2002 and was its Chair from 2000 until the end of his term. Earlier, he served as IETF Area Director for Applications and was Chair, Co-chair, and/or Editor for IETF Working Groups focused on messaging and IETF process issues.[4]
DNS and ICANN[edit | edit source]
Dr. Klensin intimately understands technology issues within ICANN. He was involved in the early procedural and definitional work for DNS administration and top-level domain definitions and was part of the committee that worked out the transition of DNS-related responsibilities between USC-ISI and what became ICANN. Throughout his career, he has been active in a number of efforts to expand the internationalization of the Internet.
John Klensin was selected as a non-voting liaison to the ICANN Board by the Internet Engineering Task Force; that term ended after the conclusion of ICANN's AGM in 2004.
Early Academic Work[edit | edit source]
Prior to coming to MCI in mid-1994, he was INFOODS Project Coordinator for the United Nations University and, before that, was at MIT for nearly 30 years, holding Principal Research Scientist appointments in several departments including Architecture, the Center for International Studies, and the Laboratory of Architecture and Planning.
For most of his tenure at MIT he worked towards programming language standardization efforts. He has also participated in, and led, industry consortia, scientific, and quasi-governmental efforts that resulted in accepted industry standards. For example, he was a member of the Advisory Council and of the first [adhoc committees on procedures of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
Despite this background in standards development and procedures, his primary work has focused on technical and design efforts; and he has tackled the issue from a research, product development, and support angle. For example, industrially, he was the lead designer for several user-visible aspects of internetMCI, designed database and data analysis systems used by several large international corporations and governmental units (including the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the US and the Department of Social Justice in The Netherlands) in the 1970s and 1980s.
These major contributions went to manage inventories, planning, and human resource models for two of the world's largest automobile manufacturers and one oil company and for several activities of the US Department of Defense including fuel supply availability planning during the oil crisis of the mid-1970s and the development and management of the DOD budget itself.
He was also founding co-principal investigator of the Network Start-up Resource Center project, which provides technical assistance for creation of computer network connections to developing areas and continues as a senior adviser to that activity. Mr. Klensin has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Science Education and Technology and the Journal of Food Composition and Analysis.