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

Wed Apr 2 15:51:51 EDT 2025

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
> 
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