Daniel Karrenberg (born 1959, in

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in the state after Cologne and the List of cities in Germany with more than 100,000 inhabitants, seventh-largest city ...

) is a German computer scientist and one of Europe's Internet pioneers who lives in the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

Biography

From 1981 to 1987, Karrenberg was a scientific assistant and network administrator at TU Dortmund. In 1982, he helped set up

EUnet EUnet was a very loose collaboration of individual European UNIX sites in the 1980s that evolved into the fully commercial entity EUnet International Ltd in 1996. It was sold to Qwest in 1998. EUnet played a decisive role in the adoption of TCP/I ...

, the first European

Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, no ...

. From 1987 to 1992, Karrenberg worked at the

Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica The (abbr. CWI; English: "National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science") is a research centre in the field of mathematics and theoretical computer science. It is part of the institutes organization of the Dutch Research Cou ...

(CWI) in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...

, where he helped to build the central European

structured cabling In telecommunications, structured cabling is building or campus cabling infrastructure that consists of a number of standardized smaller elements (hence structured) called subsystems. Structured cabling components include twisted pair and opt ...

with links to the American

NSFNET The National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) was a program of coordinated, evolving projects sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) from 1985 to 1995 to promote advanced research and education networking in the United States. The ...

. In 1989, Karrenberg was one of the founders of

RIPE Réseaux IP Européens (RIPE, French for "European IP Networks") is a forum open to all parties with an interest in the technical development of the Internet. The RIPE community's objective is to ensure that the administrative and technical co ...

, the platform for cooperation between European internet providers. In 1992, he was instrumental in founding the world's first

Regional Internet Registry A regional Internet registry (RIR) is an organization that manages the allocation and registration of Internet number resources within a region of the world. Internet number resources include IP addresses and autonomous system (AS) numbers. ...

, the

RIPE NCC RIPE NCC (''Réseaux IP Européens'' Network Coordination Centre) is the regional Internet registry (RIR) for Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Central Asia. Its headquarters are in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, with a branch office in Dubai, U ...

, responsible for Europe, the Middle East and parts of Africa and Central Asia, which he headed until 1999. From 2000, Karrenberg was the lead scientist at RIPE NCC, leading operational activities in numerous projects including RIPE Routing Information Service (RIS), RIPE Test Traffic Measurements (TTM), DNS Monitoring Service (DNSMON), and Name Server Daemon (NSD). From 2005 to 2011, Karrenberg was a member of the Board of Trustees of the

Internet Society The Internet Society (ISOC) is an American non-profit advocacy organization founded in 1992 with local chapters around the world. It has offices in Reston, Virginia, United States, and Geneva, Switzerland. Organization The Internet Society ...

, of which he chaired for three years.

Awards

In 2001, Karrenberg received the

Jonathan B. Postel Service Award Jonathan Bruce Postel (; August 6, 1943 – October 16, 1998) was an American computer scientist who made many significant contributions to the development of the Internet, particularly with respect to standards. He is known principally for bein ...

for Two Decades Of Extraordinary Dedication To The Development Of Networking In Europe And Around The World. In 2012, he was inducted into the

Internet Hall of Fame The Internet Hall of Fame is an honorary lifetime achievement award administered by the Internet Society (ISOC) in recognition of individuals who have made significant contributions to the development and advancement of the Internet. Overview ...

in the Global Connectors category.

References

Daniel Karrenberg
Biography at the website of

Sarah Mitroff
Daniel Karrenberg Helped Bring the Internet to Europe; Now He Keeps It Running
Daniel Karrenberg
Biography at the website of the

Peter Olsthoorn
Daniel Karrenberg, Duitse netwerkpionier koos jong voor Amsterdam: ‚Direct met Amerikaanse uitvinders communiceren was sensationeel‘
{{DEFAULTSORT:Karrenberg, Daniel 1959 births Living people German computer scientists Internet pioneers German expatriates in the Netherlands Scientists from Düsseldorf Scientists from North Rhine-Westphalia Technical University of Dortmund alumni