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→Beginnings of the Internet
The level of control he had over the burgeoning Internet was underscored months before he past away; he redirected half the Internet's 12 directory-information computers to his own system. Jon later told authorities that he was only testing how such a transition would run.<ref>[http://www.isoc.org/postel/lat.shtml ISOC.org]</ref> Despite this level of power and authority, Jon was a soft-spoken man who undertook his work in an open and transparent manner.
The level of control he had over the burgeoning Internet was underscored months before he past away; he redirected half the Internet's 12 directory-information computers to his own system. Jon later told authorities that he was only testing how such a transition would run.<ref>[http://www.isoc.org/postel/lat.shtml ISOC.org]</ref> Despite this level of power and authority, Jon was a soft-spoken man who undertook his work in an open and transparent manner.
==RFC Editor==
Mr. Postel acted as the RFC Editor for some 25 years, and was thus in charge of documenting and facilitating the technical, engineering-based discussions that the Internet's pioneers were having. The term [[RFC]] was coined by Jon's friend and [[ARPANET]] colleauge, [[Steve Crocker]]; Steve did not know what to call his first technical proposal regarding the network's development, and this he referred to it as a "Request For Comments". Postel led a small group of people who were expected to create consensus on hundreds of technical proposals that keep the Internet unified and functioning; the work he accomplished in this role continues to allow the Internet to flourish to this day.<ref>[http://www.usc.edu/dept/pubrel/trojan_family/spring99/Postel/postel.html USC.edu]</ref>
===IANA===
===IANA===
Jon voluntarily took on the task of founding and running [[IANA]], the Internet's necessary numbering authority. He initially performed all numbering procedures and allocations manually. Thus, in [[Vint Cerf]]'s words, he kept track of the names of all things in the networked universe.<ref>[http://www.isoc.org/awards/postel/memory.shtml ISOC.org]</ref> It sprung from the expansion of the [[ARPANET]], with a vision of breaking messages into packets, each carrying an address, and sending them over a network to find their own way to another computer; the packets would then be reassembled into the original message. For this system to function each computer would have to have an individual address that would both be intelligible and constant; Jon invented this numbering address scheme. His system also allowed the numbers that computers used for addresses to be translated into English, and thus servers could be accessed by going to a site; i.e. www.example.com, instead of typing in something like 124.345.253.196. As the early network was quite small, Jon initially kept track of all of the existent addresses on scraps of paper. As the network grew, a more formal organization was needed; and the USC's [[ISI]] was contracted by the U.S. government to manage the address system, Jon Postel was the founder and director. Thus, Jon was influential in establishing the protocols of the [[DNS]], the roles of [[registry|registries]] and [[registrar]]s, and all necessary technical standards.<ref>[http://www.usc.edu/dept/pubrel/trojan_family/spring99/Postel/postel.html USC.edu]</ref>
Jon voluntarily took on the task of founding and running [[IANA]], the Internet's necessary numbering authority. He initially performed all numbering procedures and allocations manually. Thus, in [[Vint Cerf]]'s words, he kept track of the names of all things in the networked universe.<ref>[http://www.isoc.org/awards/postel/memory.shtml ISOC.org]</ref> It sprung from the expansion of the [[ARPANET]], with a vision of breaking messages into packets, each carrying an address, and sending them over a network to find their own way to another computer; the packets would then be reassembled into the original message. For this system to function each computer would have to have an individual address that would both be intelligible and constant; Jon invented this numbering address scheme. His system also allowed the numbers that computers used for addresses to be translated into English, and thus servers could be accessed by going to a site; i.e. www.example.com, instead of typing in something like 124.345.253.196. As the early network was quite small, Jon initially kept track of all of the existent addresses on scraps of paper. As the network grew, a more formal organization was needed; and the USC's [[ISI]] was contracted by the U.S. government to manage the address system, Jon Postel was the founder and director. Thus, Jon was influential in establishing the protocols of the [[DNS]], the roles of [[registry|registries]] and [[registrar]]s, and all necessary technical standards.<ref>[http://www.usc.edu/dept/pubrel/trojan_family/spring99/Postel/postel.html USC.edu]</ref>