John Quarterman
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John S. Quarterman (born April 27, 1954) is an American author and longtime Internet participant. He wrote one of the classic books about networking prior to the commercialization of the Internet. He has also written about
risk management Risk management is the identification, evaluation, and prioritization of risks, followed by the minimization, monitoring, and control of the impact or probability of those risks occurring. Risks can come from various sources (i.e, Threat (sec ...
.


Biography

Quarterman grew up in the Bemiss community, near
Valdosta, Georgia Valdosta is a city in and the county seat of Lowndes County, Georgia, Lowndes County in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. As the principal city of the Valdosta Metropolitan Statistical Area, Valdosta metropolitan statistical area, ...
, US. He first used the
ARPANET The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first computer networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the tec ...
in 1974 while attending
Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...
, and worked on UNIX ARPANET software at BBN (the original prime contractor on the ARPANET) from 1977 to 1981. He was twice elected to the board of directors of the
USENIX USENIX is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization based in Berkeley, California and founded in 1975 that supports advanced computing systems, operating system (OS), and computer networking research. It organizes several confe ...
Association, a professional association related to the UNIX operating system. While on that board, he was instrumental in its vote in 1987 to approve the first funding received by
UUNET UUNET Technologies, Inc., formerly UUNET Communications Services, was an American commercial Internet service provider. Founded in 1987, it was one of the first and largest commercial ISPs and one of the early Tier 1 networks. It was based in ...
, which, along with
PSINet PSINet, formerly Performance Systems International, was an American internet service provider based in Northern Virginia. As one of the first commercial Internet service providers (ISPs), it was involved in the commercialization of the Internet ...
, became one of the first two commercial Internet Service Providers (ISPs). He co-founded the first Internet consulting firm in Texas (TIC) in 1986, and co-founded one of the first ISPs in Austin (Zilker Internet Park, since sold to Jump Point). He was a founder of TISPA, the Texas ISP Association. He was a founder and Chief Technology Officer of Matrix NetSystems Inc., established as Matrix Information and Directory Services (MIDS) in 1990. At Matrix, Quarterman published the first maps of the whole Internet; conducted the first Internet Demographic Survey and started the first continuing series of performance data about the entire Internet in 1993, on the web since 1995 in the Internet Weather Report, and also visible as Internet Average, plus comparisons of ISPs visible as ISP Ratings. Matrix NetSystems, which had also been known as Matrix.Net, Inc., merged with Alignment Software, Inc. in April, 2003, briefly becoming Xaffire Inc., before Keynote Systems, Inc. acquired Xaffire's Austin operations in December 2003, and private equity firm
Thoma Bravo Thoma Bravo, LP is an American private equity and growth capital firm based in Chicago, Illinois. It is known for being particularly active in acquiring enterprise software companies and has over $130billion in assets under management . It ...
merged Keynote, which it had acquired in 2013, into Dynatrace. Inter@ctive Week listed John Quarterman as one of the 25 Unsung Heroes of the Internet in 1998, saying ..."As president of IDS Quarterman, 43, is to Net demographics what The Gallup Organization is to opinion polls." Internet World interviewed Quarterman at length with a full-page picture in its June 1996 issue, as Surveyors of Cyberspace. On September 21, 2006, Quarterman served as a panelist with Hank Hultquist and Michele Chaboudy at a joint meeting of the
IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE ...
Central Texas Section and Communications and Signal Processing Chapters titled " Network Neutrality: Altruism or Capitalism" at St. Edward's University in
Austin, Texas Austin ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Texas. It is the county seat and most populous city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and W ...
. He also organized a November 2, 2006, panel on Net Neutrality for EFF-Austin, featuring Quarterman and Hank Hultquist, Michael Hathaway, and Austin Bay.


Major works

* ''The Design and Implementation of the 4.3
BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginni ...
UNIX Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...
Operating System An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...
'', Addison-Wesley, January 1989, , Co-author with Samuel J. Leffler, Marshall K. McKusick, Michael J. Karels (describing a system which has been very influential on the TCP/IP protocols). * ''
The Matrix ''The Matrix'' is a 1999 science fiction film, science fiction action film written and directed by the Wachowskis. It is the first installment in the The Matrix (franchise), ''Matrix'' film series, starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Ca ...
: Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems Worldwide'', Digital Press, 1990, (a comprehensive book on the history, technology, and people of
computer network A computer network is a collection of communicating computers and other devices, such as printers and smart phones. In order to communicate, the computers and devices must be connected by wired media like copper cables, optical fibers, or b ...
s worldwide). * ''Practical internetworking with TCP/IP and UNIX'', Addison-Wesley, September 1993, , Co-author with Smoot Carl-Mitchell. * ''The Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System'', Addison-Wesley, April 1996, , Co-author with Marshall K. McKusick, Keith Bostic, Michael J. Karels. * ''Risk Management Solutions for Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 IT Compliance'', Wiley, 2006, .


Trivia

* At RIPE-58RIPE-58
/ref> it was revealed by Daniel Karrenberg that John Quarterman originally came up with the acronym
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 ...
after seeing a slide made by Karrenberg that said: Réseaux IP Européens at a meeting in
Brussels Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) is a Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium#Regions, region of Belgium comprising #Municipalit ...
, 1989.


References


External links


John Quarterman's website


(entry in the
Jargon File The Jargon File is a glossary and usage dictionary of slang used by computer programmers. The original Jargon File was a collection of terms from technical cultures such as the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, MIT AI Lab ...
)
The Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System

John Quarterman's ''Clan Sinclair'' website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Quarterman, John Harvard University alumni BSD people 1954 births Living people People from Lowndes County, Georgia American male writers