[NLnet Press] Press release: European Pioneer Jaap Akkerhuis inducted in Internet Hall of Fame

[NLnet foundation press list]

Pioneer Jaap Akkerhuis inducted in Internet Hall of Fame
Research engineer from NLnet Labs celebrated as "global innovator"

THIS PRESS RELEASE ONLINE:
https://nlnet.nl/press/20170919-internethalloffame-en.html

                                     Amsterdam/Los Angeles, 19 september 
2017

Last night in Los Angeles internet pioneer Jaap Akkerhuis was honored by 
his international peers through induction into the Internet Hall of Fame. 
Akkerhuis (The Netherlands, 1951) played - without seeking the spotlights - 
an important role in the introduction of the internet in Euroep. He is the 
only one from Europe out of six new inductees in the category "Global 
Innovators".

The ceremony took place at the University of California in Los Angeles 
(UCLA), where almost half a century ago the first message was sent across 
the predecessor to the internet, the ARPANET. Jaap Akkerhuis is still 
actively contributing to todays internet, currently as Research Engineer at 
the not-for-profit research lab NLnet Labs, as well as in a number of other 
roles such as ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee.

Akkerhuis started his career in 1979 at the Computer Laboratory of the 
Mathematical Centre (current name: Centrum voor Wiskunde & Informatica), 
which in the years that followed established itself as the center of 
European computer networks. He was part of the small team led by Teus Hagen 
which was responsible for most actual networking activities. Later, this 
team was expanded by Piet Beertema, Jim McKie and Daniel Karrenberg. In 
addition to his regular scientific tasks, Akkerhuis spent countless nights 
and weekends in setting up and debugging connections and first 
international gateways - for countries all the way up to Australia, via 
Japan and South Korea. Well before the first official public connection to 
the internet outside of the USA was made at CWI, he personally convinced 
Jon Postel to allocate him a range of IP-addresses to avoid future 
collisions.

While many of the other European pioneers stayed in Europe, Akkerhuis went 
back and forth between scientific institutes, research labs, internet 
service providers and registries in Europe and across the USA - thereby 
playing a key role as a global connector in the technical community. 
Akkerhuis is appreciated by many for his no-nonsense approach and lack of 
ego. He made a flood of technical and organisational contributions over the 
years, for instance in inventing an improvised modem that used a repurposed 
plotter (which was originally used to make technical drawing) to instead 
rotate the dial of vintage pre-DTMF phones - effectively created an 
automatic modem which could be used to set up connections without manual 
intervention.

In 1987 Akkerhuis moved to the US to join the Information Technology Centre 
at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA), followed by another two 
years at Mt. Xinu (Berkeley, CA.) and three years at Bell Laboratories 
(Murray Hill, NJ). In 1995 he returned to the Netherlands to join NLnet, 
the first Dutch ISP. In 1999 he joined the newly established Dutch ccTLD 
(SIDN). Since 2004 he has been working as Research Engineer at NLnet Labs, 
an independent not-for-profit research and development lab renowned for its 
work on a.o. DNSSEC and BGP Security.

Throughout his career Akkerhuis spent a truly generous amount of time 
sharing his knowledge with others, in organisations such as EUUG, USENIX, 
IETF, Internet Society, RIPE, ICANN and CENTR. At USENIX he was on both on 
the Editorial Advisory Board and production editor of Computing Systems. He 
served as a co-chair for the IETF ProvReg Working Group, and still is 
co-chair of the RIPE DNS working group. He was member of the Permanent 
Stakeholders Group of ENISA and has acted as an occasional instructor for 
ISOC courses for TLD registries. He has served in ICANN's Security and 
Stability Advisory Committee since its inception. He is a member of the ISO 
3166 Maintenance Agency, which maintains the authoritative list of country 
codes. He remains an active ports maintainer in FreeBSD. Outside of the 
internet world, Jaap Akkerhuis is a member of the Stanford Solar Center and 
SuperSID Software Committee.

The induction of Akkerhuis now brings the total number of Netherlands' 
internet pioneers in the Internet Hall of Fame to five. Previously, this 
honour had been bestowed upon his former colleagues at CWI and NLnet Daniel 
Karrenberg en Teus Hagen, together with SURFnet's Kees Neggers and Erik 
Huizer (a former chairman of the Board of Supervisors of NLnet). The 
Internet Hall of Fame is an initiative of Internet Society, the assocation 
for internet professionals with a global membership of nearly 100.000 
members. In total there have been 91 men and women included in the honorary 
gallery sine zijn er sinds 2011.

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About NLnet Foundation
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NLnet foundation is an independent organisation whose means come from 
donations and legacies. The history of NLnet goes back to 1982 when a group 
of Europeans led by former NLnet director and member of the Internet Hall 
of Fame Teus Hagen announced the European Unix Network (EUnet) which became 
the first public wide area network in Europe and the place where internet 
was introduced to Europe. NLnet also pioneered the worlds first dial-in and 
ISDN infrastructure with full country coverage. In 1997 all commercial 
activities were sold to UUnet (now Verizon) and since that time NLnet has 
focussed on supporting the open internet, and the privacy and security of 
internet users.

Its private capital ensures an absolute independent position. The articles 
of association for the NLnet foundation state: "to promote the exchange of 
electronic information and all that is related or beneficial to that 
purpose". NLnet's core business is to support independent organizations and 
people that contribute to an open information society and to a safe, secure 
and open internet.

A number of times a year NLnet organises a worldwide open call for projects 
to be supported. The long list of NLnet-funded projects includes NLnet 
Labs, Tor project, Unhosted, Qubes, NOMA, Wireguard, Koruza, Serval, Jitsi, 
ARPA2, NoScript, CeroWRT and GNUnet.

Developers and researchers are invited to apply for grants.

                               https://nlnet.nl

For further information contact:

* Michiel Leenaars
 +31 6 27050947
* Marc Gauw
 +31 (0) 20 888 4252