Citizenship Argentina Fields Computer Science | Alma mater MIT Name Radia Perlman | |
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Thesis Network layer protocols with Byzantine robustness (1988) Known for Network and security protocols; computer books Education Massachusetts Institute of Technology Books Network Security: Private Communication in a Public World | ||
Interview with radia perlman
Radia Joy Perlman (born January 1, 1951) is a software designer and network engineer. She is most famous for her invention of the spanning-tree protocol (STP), which is fundamental to the operation of network bridges, while working for Digital Equipment Corporation. She also made large contributions to many other areas of network design and standardization, such as link-state protocols, including TRILL, which she invented to correct some of the shortcomings of spanning-trees.
Contents
- Interview with radia perlman
- Internet hall of fame induction 2014 radia perlman
- Early research
- Life and career
- Awards
- References
She is currently employed by Dell EMC.
Internet hall of fame induction 2014 radia perlman
Early research
As an undergraduate at MIT she undertook a UROP (Undergraduate Research Opportunity), in lieu of course units, within the LOGO Lab at the (then) MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Working under the supervision of Seymour Papert, she developed a child-friendly version of the educational robotics language LOGO, called TORTIS ("Toddler's Own Recursive Turtle Interpreter System"). During research performed in 1974–6, young children—the youngest aged 3½ years, programmed a LOGO educational robot called a Turtle. Radia has been described as a pioneer of teaching young children computer programming.
Perlman obtained a Bachelor's, Master's in Mathematics, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from MIT in 1988. Her doctoral thesis at MIT addressed the issue of routing in the presence of malicious network failures.
Life and career
She is most famous for her invention of the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP), which is fundamental to the operation of network bridges, while working for Digital Equipment Corporation. She also made large contributions to many other areas of network design and standardization, such as link-state protocols, including TRILL, which she invented to correct some of the shortcomings of spanning-trees. She has said "The protocol is really very simple, I can summarize it in a poem!",
Her work transformed the Ethernet protocol from using a few nodes over a limited distance, into something able to create large networks.
Perlman is the author of a textbook on networking and coauthor of another on network security. She holds more than 100 issued patents.