[Bloat] [Starlink] [Cake] In loving memory of Dave Täht <3

Wed Apr 2 23:28:10 EDT 2025

vis-a-vis* "**thinking about how we could get Dave recognized for his
contributions" ➔➔ *At The Very Least Dave should immediately
be posthumously nominated to The InternetHallOfFame.org as Dave Most
Certainly Qualifies For *"Recognizing the People **Who Bring the Internet
to Life"*

geoff

On Wed, Apr 2, 2025 at 12:52 PM David P. Reed via Starlink <
starlink at lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:

> Hi all -
>
>
>
> I've already shared my sadness and appreciation of my good friend Dave on
> LinkedIn.
>
> I met him through Jim Gettys at the beginning of the Bufferbloat
> discovery, and besides our long correspondence, I hope I have given him
> enough support over the years - including introducing him to my network of
> friends, some of whom are on this list. Others he found by himself.
> He's been a one-person social network out there, who got things done
> beyond what institutions seem to be able to do. (And he amazed me by
> managing to get a stodgy IETF crowd to pay attention to the congestion
> control issue, despite much institutional resistance, and academic
> networking researchers who never got the point). Of course, Jason Livingood
> worked behind the scenes very hard to bypass corporate resistance, too.
>
> Also, I can share something that few knew about - I brought Dave into an
> ex parte policy discussion at the FCC about an idea being promoted that the
> FCC should require all routers the FCC certified to have a complete "locked
> down" configuration that could not be changed by users. I got brought in
> because of my FCC TAC involvement around Software Defined Radio. But the
> folks behind the proposal were just using that as an excuse - they wanted
> really to block WISPs by raising the cost of WiFi routers. Dave, who knew
> more than anything why re-flashing routers made them MORE secure and could
> explain it in a disarming way to lawyers and policymakers, managed to get
> the commissioners to understand that security wasn't something the FCC
> could certify, and also why commercial routers weren't at all secure. He
> was so much better at explaining in what you might call an inclusive,
> folksy way that he changed the FCC's approach significantly - away from
> Certifying Security entirely. (The SDR issue ended up not being relevant to
> routers, though SDR is still a complex policy issue that is holding back
> innovation in wireless systems.) I'm certain Dave has had much impact of
> this sort.
>
>
>
> However, Dave's passing s very frustrating to me because of two things:
>
>
>
> 1) there is no one who can replace Dave. The things he made happen will
> continue, but he was only getting started on issues like improving WiFi.
> Again, the resistance to improving WiFi is both institutional and
> corporate, and researchers won't challenge the institutional and corporate
> shibboleths that get in the way of solving critical problems in the 802.11
> implementation and systems architecture domain. (Unfortunately, WiFi has
> become a political term that is being used by "wireless" operators and
> their suppliers to fight for or against monopoly control of the airwaves,
> very parallel to the problems of getting engineering solutions on Internet
> fabric that deal with congestion. So it can't be done in the institutions
> and corporations focused away from the engineering challenges. That's why
> Dave was needed.)
>
> 2) I was thinking about how we could get Dave recognized for his
> contributions. Like other unsung heroes, Dave didn't work for BBN or some
> other moneyed entity who would commission a book or a memorial. (BBN paid
> Katie Hafner to write the text that later turned into her book "When
> Wizards Stay Up Late", which oddly only talked about the ARPANET/Internet
> pioneers who worked for BBN, omitting many of my Internet colleagues.)
> Dave wasn't the kind of guy that gets Awards from the Computer History
> Museum or the ACM or IEEE. He wasn't beloved at IETF or ISOC that I know
> of. He's in the category of folks like Noel Chiappa or Bram Cohen or
> Richard Stallman or Aaron Swartz - people I think really changed the way we
> think about computing and internetworking, but who won't be in the official
> histories.
>
> I was hoping (before this week) to try to
>
> On Wednesday, April 2, 2025 09:59, "Livingood, Jason via Cake" <
> cake at lists.bufferbloat.net> said:
>
> > Very sad news indeed! I had the pleasure of working closely with Dave
> for 15
> > years. He was generous with his time and had a unique way of bringing
> people
> > together to make the internet better for everyone!
> >
> >
> > I had to go down memory lane to recall when I first really started
> working with
> > him. It may have been around 2010 or so. In 2012, I started sending
> funds his way
> > via my day job to help him and his merry network of collaborators work
> to develop
> > the CoDel AQM.
> >
> >
> > Funding him was not necessarily easy, as Dave had a unique way of
> working and was
> > best when he had complete autonomy and only loosely outlined goals -
> typically
> > hard to sell in a big company. But he could make things happen, so it
> worked. And
> > I knew when he started complaining about maintenance needs on his boat,
> or the
> > need to recruit a new person to the project, or about a great new (and
> practical!)
> > idea, that it was time to top up his funding. ;-)
> >
> >
> > That initial CoDel support in 2012 was extended to underwrite work on
> his idea to
> > develop RRUL, the first real working latency test that I can remember
> > (https://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/bloat/wiki/RRUL_Spec/
> > <https://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/bloat/wiki/RRUL_Spec/>). He was
> also
> > helpful in introducing me to Simon Kelley, developer of dnsmasq, so we
> could
> > underwrite some IPv6 features in dnsmasq (and Dave convinced Simon to
> come to an
> > IETF meeting to help gather requirements and meet folks).
> >
> >
> > Dave got CoDel working, so we developed a compelling demo of CoDel on a
> DOCSIS
> > network (via a CeroWrt-based router connected to a cable modem) and
> brought him
> > along to IETF-86 in March 2013 in Orlando - see interview with Dave at
> > https://youtu.be/NuHYOu4aAqg?si=p0SJHLNpp_6n7XP9&t=195
> > <https://youtu.be/NuHYOu4aAqg?si=p0SJHLNpp_6n7XP9&t=195>.
> >
> >
> > From 2014-2017, I was able to make additional financial support happen
> for him, so
> > he could do R&D into how to improve buffer bloat in WiFi network links
> and
> > equipment, a project he called "Make WiFi Fast". In 2020-2021 and 2024,
> I found
> > funding for his work again, this time to work on accelerating AQM
> adoption in the
> > real world & work related to the CAKE AQM.
> >
> >
> > Thanks in part to my longstanding collaboration with Dave, tens of
> millions of
> > DOCSIS users in our network have AQM and thus far better network
> responsiveness.
> > The same is true for AQMs he worked on, CeroWrt, LibreQoS, and other
> projects. He
> > succeeded in his goal to make the internet better for everyone!
> >
> >
> > We will miss you, Dave!
> >
> >
> > Jason
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Cake mailing list
> > Cake at lists.bufferbloat.net
> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/cake
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink at lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>

-- 
Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
living as The Truth is True
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