Noel Chiappa

Joseph Noel Chiappa (b. 1956 Bermuda) is an Internet pioneer. He is a US-resident, and a retired researcher working in the area of information systems architecture and software, principally computer networks.

Chiappa attended Saltus Grammar School in Bermuda, and Phillips Academy and MIT in the US.

As a staff researcher and Internet technology pioneer at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, Chiappa co-invented the multi-protocol router. In addition to wide use at MIT, that router was later used at Stanford in 1982; other multi-protocol routers at Stanford were invented independently by William Yeager. The MIT multi-protocol router became the basis of the multi-protocol router from Proteon, Inc., the first commercially available multi-protocol router (January, 1986).

Chiappa was the first to propose and design the original version of Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP). It was only revised by others including Bob Baldwin, Dave clark, and Steve Szymanski. He is acknowledged in several other RFC's, such as RFC-826, RFC-919, RFC-950 and others. He has worked extensively on the Locator/Identifier Separation Protocol (LISP). In 1992, Chiappa was also credited for fixing the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" protocol bug as well as other document problems.

Chiappa is listed on the "Birth of the Internet" plaque at the entrance to the Gates Computer Science Building, Stanford.

From 2012, Chiappa was working on long-term issues in both the Internet Research Task Force and Internet Engineering Task Force and its predecessors; he served as the Area Director for Internet Services of the Internet Engineering Steering Group from 1987-1992. He is also involved in the development of the IP: next generation (IPng). A report, for instance, documented his objection to the IPng selection process and cited his alternative IPng project called Nimrod.

As of 2016, Chiappa was preparing to write iMucs, a Multics-like operating system.

Among many non-technical interests, he is particularly interested in Japanese woodblock prints, and helps maintain online catalogue raisonnés for two major woodblock artists, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi and Utagawa Hiroshige II.

Chiappa lives in Yorktown, Virginia with his family.