Paul Baran

Paul Baran (born April 29, 1926) was one of the three inventors of packet-switched networks, along with Donald Davies and Leonard Kleinrock. He was born in Grodno (then Poland), but his family moved to Philadelphia in 1928. Baran did undergraduate work at Drexel University, obtained his Masters degree in Engineering from UCLA in 1959 and began working for the RAND Corporation in the same year.

Similar ideas for a distributed data network were being independently pursued by Donald Davies from the National Physical Laboratory in the UK, although Davies was primarily concerned with the problem of resource-sharing rather than Baran's focus on military issues.

Baran also provided a spark of invention to four other important networking technologies. He was involved in the origin of the packet voice technology developed by StrataCom at its predecessor, Packet Technologies. This technology led to the first commercial pre-standard ATM product. He was also involved with the discrete multitone modem technology developed by Telebit, which was one of the roots of Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing which is used in DSL modems. Paul Baran founded Metricom, the first wireless Internet company, which deployed Ricochet, the first public wireless mesh networking system. He also founded Com21, an early cable modem company. In all cases, he provided early ideas and gave credibility to strong groups of developers who then took those ideas far beyond Baran's original spark.

Paul Baran also extended his work in packet switching to wireless-spectrum theory, developing what he called "kindergarten rules" for the use of wireless spectrum.

In addition to his innovation in networking products, he is also credited with inventing the metal detector used in airports.

References

* [http://www.ibiblio.org/pioneers/baran.html "ibiblio.org" entry]

External links

* [http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_rand.htm Paul Baran Invents Packet Switching] – Living Internet
* [http://www.cbi.umn.edu/oh/display.phtml?id=110 44-page oral history interview with Paul Baran] . Charles Babbage Institute University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Baran describes his working environment at RAND, as well as his initial interest in survivable communications, the evolution of his plan for distributed networks, the objections he received, the writing and distribution of his eleven-volume work, "On Distributed Communications." Baran discusses his interaction with the group at ARPA who were responsible for the later development of the ARPANET.
* [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.03/baran.html Founding Father] "Wired", Issue 9.03 Mar 2001, (interview with Paul Baran, exploring the background to Baran's work at RAND on survivable networks).
* [http://www.infohatter.com/node/4 The Influence of Paul Baran on the Development of the Internet] (Academic Paper written by B. Vuyk)
* [http://www.rand.org/publications/classics/baran.list.html Paul Baran, On Distributed Communications, 1964]
* [http://ssrn.com/abstract=732483 Wireless Communications and Computing at a Crossroads] , "Journal on Telecommunications & High Technology Law", Vol. 3, No. 2, p. 239, 205 (describing Paul Baran's development of packet switching and its application to wireless computing).
* [http://www.cablelabs.com/news/newsletter/SPECS/JanFeb_SPECSTECH/tech.pgs/leadstory.html Transcript of a keynote address he gave in 2000 including a photo]
* [http://rand.org/pubs/papers/2008/P1995.pdf Reliable Digital Communications Systems Using Unreliable Network Repeater Nodes]