David L. Mills
David L. Mills, 2005
Born (1938-06-03) June 3, 1938
Oakland, California
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater
Known for
Awards
Scientific career
Fields
InstitutionsUniversity of Delaware
Websitewww.eecis.udel.edu/~mills

David L. Mills (born June 3, 1938) is an American computer engineer and Internet pioneer.[1]

Education

Mills earned his PhD in Computer and Communication Sciences from the University of Michigan in 1971.[2] While at Michigan he worked on the ARPA sponsored Conversational Use of Computers (CONCOMP) project and developed DEC PDP-8 based hardware and software to allow terminals to be connected over phone lines to an IBM 360 mainframe.[3][4]

Career

In 1977, Mills began working at COMSAT. There he worked on synchronizing the clocks of computers connected to ARPANET, inventing the Network Time Protocol.[2][5][6] He told The New Yorker in 2022 that he enjoyed working on synchronized time because no one else was working on it, giving him his own "little fief".[2] In the mid-2000s, Mills turned over full control of the NTP reference implementation to Harlan Stenn.[2]

Mills was the chairman of the Gateway Algorithms and Data Structures Task Force (GADS) and the first chairman of the Internet Architecture Task Force.[7] He invented the DEC LSI-11 based Fuzzball router that was used for the 56 kbit/s NSFNET (1985),[8] inspired the author of ping for BSD (1983),[9] and had the first FTP implementation. He has authored numerous RFCs.

In 1999 he was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, and in 2002, he was inducted as a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for contributions to network protocols and network timekeeping in the development of the Internet.[10] In 2008, Mills was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) for contributions to Internet timekeeping and the development of the Network Time Protocol. In 2013 he received the IEEE Internet Award "For significant leadership and sustained contributions in the research, development, standardization, and deployment of quality time synchronization capabilities for the Internet."[11]

Mills is an emeritus professor at the University of Delaware, where he was a full professor from 1986 to 2008.[2] He also holds an adjunct appointment at Delaware so that he can continue to teach.

Personal life

Mills is an amateur radio operator, callsign W3HCF.[12][13]

Mills has glaucoma, but a surgeon saved some of the vision in his left eye when he was a child. He attended a school in San Mateo, California, for the visually impaired.[2] His vision began worsening around 2012, and by 2022 he was fully blind.[2]

References

  1. ↑ David L. Mills. "Biography and Credentials". David L. Mills, PhD, Professor. University of Delaware. Retrieved 30 October 2022.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Hopper, Nate (30 September 2022). "The Thorny Problem of Keeping the Internet's Time". The New Yorker.
  3. ↑ The Data Concentrator, David Mills, May 1968, CONCOMP Project, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
  4. ↑ System/360 interface engineering report, D. L. Mills, November 1967, CONCOMP Project, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
  5. ↑ RFC 778: DCNET Internet Clock Service, D.L. Mills, COMSAT Laboratories, April 18, 1981
  6. ↑ RFC 958: Network Time Protocol (NTP), D.L. Mills, M/A-COM Linkabit, September 1985
  7. ↑ John S. Quarterman (1990). Matrix: Computer Networks and Conferencing Systems Worldwide (2 ed.). Digital Press. pp. 185–186. ISBN 1555580335.
  8. ↑ "Fuzzball: The Innovative Router" Archived 2011-05-20 at the Wayback Machine, web page on NSF's "The Internet: Changing the Way We Communicate" Archived 2011-05-14 at the Wayback Machine
  9. ↑ "The Story of the PING Program" Archived 2011-05-14 at the Wayback Machine, Mike Muuss
  10. ↑ "IEEE Fellows 2002 | IEEE Communications Society".
  11. ↑ "IEEE Internet Award Recipients: 2013 - David Mills", IEEE Web site, accessed 27 January 2013
  12. ↑ Dave Mills Personal Stuff, Web page, University of Delaware
  13. ↑ "Amateur License - W3HCF - Mills, David L", FCC Universal Licensing System
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