Quick Facts
Biography
Paul Vixie is an American Internet pioneer, the author of several RFCs and some Unix software.
Vixie attended George Washington High School in San Francisco, California. He received a Ph.D in computer science from Keio University in 2011.
He authored the standard UNIX system programs SENDS, proxynet, rtty and Vixie cron. At one point he ran his own consulting business, Vixie Enterprises.
Career
After he left Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1994, he founded Internet Software Consortium (ISC) together with Rick Adams and Carl Malamud to support BIND and other software for the Internet. The activities of ISC were assumed by a new company, Internet Systems Consortium in 2004. Although ISC operates the F root server, Vixie at one point joined the Open Root Server Network (ORSN) project and operated their L root server.
In 1995 he cofounded the Palo Alto Internet Exchange (PAIX) and, after Metromedia Fiber Network (MFN) bought it in 1999, served as the chief technology officer to MFN / AboveNet and later as the president of PAIX.
In 1998 he cofounded Mail Abuse Prevention System (MAPS), a California non-profit company with the goal of stopping email abuse.
Vixie stated in 2002 that he "now hold[s] the record for 'most CERT advisories due to a single author.'"
In 2008, Vixie served as a judge for the Mozilla Foundation's "Download Day", an attempt to set a Guinness World Record for most downloads in a single day for a new piece of software.
Vixie served on the Board of Trustees of the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) from 2005 to 2013, and served as chairman in 2009 and 2010.
Vixie also serves on the Security and Stability Advisory Committee of ICANN.
In 2013, after nearly 20 years at ISC, he founded a new company, Farsight Security, Inc. spinning off the Security Business Unit from ISC.
In 2014, Vixie was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame as an Innovator.
Realizations
- BIND
- crontab
- DHCP
- sendmail
- "ISC DHCP". Internet Software Consortium. Retrieved 2017-01-05.
Publications
- Vixie, Paul; Avolio, Frederick M. (1995). Sendmail: Theory and Practice. Maynard, Mass: Digital Press. ISBN 1-55558-127-7.