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'''Radia Joy Perlman''' ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|r|eɪ|d|i|ə}};<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgbhWUVx_ts&t=38s|title=Making Data Flow: The Radia Perlman Story|work=National Inventors Hall of Fame|date=May 9, 2016|access-date=September 2, 2022}}</ref> born December 18, 1951) is an American computer programmer and network engineer. She is a major figure in assembling the networks and technology to enable what we now know as the internet. She is most famous for her invention of the [[Spanning Tree Protocol]] (STP), which is fundamental to the operation of [[network bridge]]s, while working for [[Digital Equipment Corporation]], thus earning her nickname "Mother of the Internet".<ref name="SPT">{{cite web |title=Radia Perlman Spanning Tree Protocol|url=https://lemelson.mit.edu/resources/radia-perlman |website=NAE Website |access-date=20 July 2021}}</ref> Her innovations have made a huge impact on how networks self-organize and move data. She also made large contributions to many other areas of network design and standardization: for example, enabling today's [[link-state routing protocol]]s, to be more robust, scalable, and easy to manage.
Radia Perlman is an American computer scientist and network engineer, celebrated for her pioneering work in network design and standardization. Born on December 18, 1951, in Portsmouth, Virginia, Perlman's innovations have been foundational to the development of robust and scalable network infrastructures, most notably through her invention of the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP).
 
Perlman was elected a member of the [[National Academy of Engineering]] in 2019 for contributions to Internet routing and bridging protocols.<ref>{{cite web |title=Dr. Radia J. Perlman |url=https://www.nae.edu/130123/Dr-Radia-J-Perlman |website=National Academy of Engineering |access-date=2023-06-30}}</ref> She holds over 100 issued patents. She was elected to the [[Internet Hall of Fame]] in 2014, and to the [[National Inventors Hall of Fame]] in 2016.<ref>{{cite web |title=Radia Perlman |url=https://www.internethalloffame.org/inductees/radia-perlman |website=Internet Hall of Fame |access-date=2023-06-30}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Radia Perlman: Robust Network Routing and Bridging |url=https://www.invent.org/inductees/radia-perlman |date=2016 |publisher=National Inventors Hall of Fame |access-date=2023-06-30}}</ref> She received lifetime achievement awards from [[USENIX]] in 2006 and from the [[Association for Computing Machinery]]’s [[SIGCOMM]] in 2010.<ref>{{cite web |title=Flame Award |date=December 6, 2011 |url=https://www.usenix.org/about/awards/flame |publisher=USENIX |access-date=2023-06-30}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=SIGCOMM Award Recipients |url=http://www.sigcomm.org/awards/sigcomm-awards |publisher=ACM SIGCOMM |access-date=2023-06-30}}</ref>
== Early life and Education ==▼
Perlman grew up in a family that valued education and intellectual pursuit; her parents were both engineers who fostered her interest in mathematics and science from an early age. She attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she earned a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in Mathematics.<sup>1</sup> Perlman later pursued a Ph.D. in Computer Science at MIT, focusing her research on routing protocols in network systems.
 
More recently she has invented the [[TRILL]] protocol to correct some of the shortcomings of spanning trees, allowing Ethernet to make optimal use of bandwidth. As of 2022, she was a Fellow at [[Dell Technologies]].<ref name=amazon-bio>{{cite book |title=Network Security: Private Communication in a Public World (Prentice Hall Series in Computer Networking and Distributed Systems) 3rd Edition |isbn=978-0136643609 |last1=Kaufman |first1=Charlie |last2=Perlman |first2=Radia |last3=Speciner |first3=Mike |last4=Perlner |first4=Ray |date=September 15, 2022 |publisher=Addison-Wesley }}</ref>
== Innovation: The Spanning Tree Protocol ==▼
In the early 1980s, while working at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), Perlman developed the Spanning Tree Protocol.<sup>2</sup> This protocol addressed a critical issue in network design: the problem of network loops in Ethernet networks. Network loops occur when there are multiple paths between network switches, causing data packets to circulate indefinitely and leading to network congestion and failure.
 
== AddressingEarly Network Loopslife ==
Perlman was born in 1951
Before Perlman's innovation, network administrators faced a dilemma. Redundant paths in a network are essential for reliability and fault tolerance, but they can create loops that disrupt network communication. Perlman's STP provided a solution by enabling network bridges to communicate and create a loop-free logical topology. The protocol automatically disables redundant paths until they are needed, effectively preventing loops while maintaining the benefits of redundancy.<sup>3</sup>
, [[Portsmouth, Virginia]]. She grew up in [[Loch Arbour, New Jersey]].<ref>[https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/516527127/ "Music Winners Feted"], ''Red Bank Register'', December 27, 1968. Accessed September 20, 2021. "Mrs. Benjamin Nebman, 1308 Edgewood Ave., hosted a party in her home to honor her students Adrienne Wigdortz, Wanamassa, and Radia Perlman, Loch Arbour, who were two of the winners of the Monmouth Arts Foundation Merit Award for piano."</ref> She is Jewish.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://jwa.org/people/perlman-radia|title=Radia Perlman}}</ref> Both of her parents worked as [[engineer]]s for the US government. Her father worked on [[radar]] and her mother was a mathematician by training who worked as a [[computer programmer]]. During her school years Perlman found math and science to be “effortless and fascinating”, but had no problem achieving top grades in other subjects as well. She enjoyed playing the piano and [[French horn]]. While her mother helped her with her math homework, they mainly talked about literature and music. But she didn't feel like she fit underneath the stereotype of an "engineer" as she did not break apart computer parts.<ref name="Salim">{{cite journal| last = Salim| first = Nancy| date = 18 October 2010| title = Radia Perlman: Don't Call Me the Mother of the Internet| url = https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/03/radia-perlman-dont-call-me-the-mother-of-the-internet/284146/| journal = The Atlantic | access-date = 20 March 2018}}</ref>
 
Despite being the best science and math student in her school it was only when Perlman took a programming class in high school that she started to consider a career that involved computers. She was the only woman in the class and later reflected "I was not a hands-on type person. It never occurred to me to take anything apart. I assumed I'd either get electrocuted, or I'd break something".<ref name="Salim 10–12">{{cite journal| last = Salim| first = Nancy| date = 18 October 2010| title = Meet the Mother of the Internet| journal = IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine| volume = 4| issue = 2| pages = 10–12| doi = 10.1109/MWIE.2010.938214| s2cid = 32207039}}</ref> She graduated from [[Ocean Township High School]] in 1969.<ref>[http://www.digifind-it.com/redbank/_1960-1979/1968/1968-12-12.pdf&page=39 "College's Chamber Chorus Presents Oratorio Tuesday"], ''Red Bank Register'', December 12, 1968. Accessed September 20, 2021. "He will be accompanied by Radia Perlman, also an Ocean Township High School senior."</ref>
=== Impact on Society ===
The implementation of STP revolutionized Ethernet networking by allowing for the creation of larger and more resilient networks. It became a standard part of network bridge protocols (IEEE 802.1D) and is integral to network equipment used worldwide.<sup>4</sup> Perlman's work enabled the expansion of complex network topologies, contributing significantly to the growth of the internet and large-scale enterprise networks. The ability to prevent network loops while maintaining redundancy has been crucial for the reliability of modern network systems, affecting everything from business operations to personal communications.
 
▲== Early life and Education ==
=== Evolution and Current Use ===
As an undergraduate at [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT]] Perlman learned programming for a physics class. She was given her first paid job in 1971 as part-time programmer for the [[Logo (programming language)|LOGO]] Lab at the (then) MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, programming [[system software]] such as [[debuggers]].<ref name="Salim"/>
While the original STP is still in use, it has evolved to meet the demands of modern networking. Enhancements such as the Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP) and the Multiple Spanning Tree Protocol (MSTP) have been developed to improve convergence times and scalability for larger networks.<sup>5</sup> Additionally, Perlman contributed to the development of the Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL) protocol, designed to overcome some limitations of STP by allowing for more efficient use of network paths.
 
Working under the supervision of [[Seymour Papert]], she developed a child-friendly version of the educational robotics language LOGO, called TORTIS ("Toddler's Own Recursive Turtle Interpreter System"). During research performed in 1974–76, young children—the youngest aged 3½ years, programmed a LOGO educational robot called a Turtle. Perlman has been described as a pioneer of teaching young children computer programming.<ref>{{cite journal |title=Radia Perlman – A pioneer of young children computer programming |author=Leonel Morgado|journal=Current Developments in Technology-Assisted Education |year=2006 |pages=1903–1908 |citeseerx = 10.1.1.99.8166 |display-authors=etal}}</ref> Afterwards, she was inspired to make a new programming language that would teach much younger children similar to Logo, but using special "keyboards" and input devices. This project was abandoned because "being the only woman around, I wanted to be taken seriously as a 'scientist' and was a little embarrassed that my project involved cute little kids". MIT media project later tracked her down and told her that she started a new field called [[tangible user interface]] from the leftovers of her abandoned project.<ref name="Salim"/> As a math grad at MIT she needed to find an adviser for her thesis, and joined the MIT group at [[BBN Technologies]]. There she first got involved with designing [[network protocols]].<ref name="Salim"/> Perlman obtained a B.S. and M.S. in Mathematics and a Ph.D. in [[Computer Science]] from [[MIT]] in 1988.<ref>{{cite web|title=Radia Perlman|publisher=[[MIT]]|url=http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/perlman.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071208092956/http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/perlman.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=8 December 2007|access-date=14 October 2012}}</ref> Her doctoral thesis on routing in environments where malicious network failures are present serves as the basis for much of the work that now exists in this area.<ref name="SPT"/>
=== Further Contributions and Legacy ===
Beyond STP, Perlman holds over 100 patents and has made substantial contributions to network security and encryption. She authored the textbook ''Interconnections: Bridges, Routers, Switches, and Internetworking Protocols'', which is considered a fundamental resource in the field.<sup>6</sup> Perlman's work has earned her numerous accolades, including induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2016 and the Internet Hall of Fame in 2014.
 
When studying at MIT in the late 60s she was one among the 50 or so women students, in a class of about 1,000 students. To begin with MIT only had one women’s dorm, limiting the number of women students that could study. When the men’s dorms at MIT became [[Mixed-sex education|coed]] Perlman moved out of the women’s dorm into a mixed dorm, where she became the "resident female". She later said that she was so used to the gender imbalance, that it became normal. Only when she saw other women students among a crowd of men she noticed that "it kind of looked weird".<ref name="Salim"/>
=== Conclusion ===
 
Radia Perlman's innovation of the Spanning Tree Protocol addressed a fundamental challenge in network engineering, enabling the creation of scalable, efficient, and reliable networks. Her work has had a lasting impact on the infrastructure of the internet and continues to influence networking technologies today. The protocols she developed remain integral to network operations, having transformed and adapted over time to meet evolving technological needs.
== Career ==
After graduation, she accepted a position with [[Bolt, Beranek, and Newman Inc.|Bolt, Beranek, and Newman]] (BBN), a government contractor that developed software for network equipment. While working for BBN, Perlman made an impression on a manager for Digital Equipment Corp and was offered a job, joining the firm in 1980. During her time working at Digital, she quickly produced a solution that did exactly what the team wanted it to; the Spanning Tree Protocol. It allows a network to deliver data reliably by making it possible to design the network with redundant links. This setup provides automatic backup paths if an active link fails, and disables the links that are not part of the tree. This leaves a single, active path between any pair of network nodes.<ref name="SPT"/> She is most famous for STP, which is fundamental to the operation of [[network bridge]]s in many smaller networks. Perlman is the author of a textbook on networking called “Interconnections: Bridges, Routers, Switches, and Internetworking Protocols” and coauthor of another on network security called “Network Security: Private Communication in a Public World”, which is a now popular college textbook. Her contributions to network security include trust models for Public Key Infrastructure, data expiration, and distributed algorithms resilient despite malicious participants.<ref>{{cite web |title=Patents by Inventor Radia J. Perlman |publisher=Justia Patents |url=http://patents.justia.com/inventor/radia-j-perlman |access-date=29 August 2013}}</ref>
 
She left Digital in 1993 and joined [[Novell]]. Then, in 1997 she left Novell and joined [[Sun Microsystems]]. Over the course of her career she has earned over 200 patents, 40 of them while working for Sun Microsystems, where in 2007 she held the title of Distinguished Engineer.<ref>{{cite web |title=Radia Perlman Spanning Tree Protocol |publisher=mit |url=https://lemelson.mit.edu/resources/radia-perlman |access-date=29 August 2013}}</ref> She has taught courses at the [[University of Washington]], [[Harvard University]], [[MIT]], and [[Texas A&M]], and has been the keynote speaker at events all over the world. Perlman is the recipient of awards such as Lifetime Achievement awards from USENIX and the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Data Communication (SIGCOMM).<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://internethalloffame.org/inductees/radia-perlman|title=Radia Perlman {{!}} Internet Hall of Fame|website=internethalloffame.org|access-date=2017-11-23}}</ref>
 
▲== Innovation: The= Spanning Tree Protocol ===
Perlman invented the spanning tree algorithm and protocol. While working as a consulting engineer at [[Digital Equipment Corporation]] (DEC) in 1984 she was tasked with developing a straightforward protocol that enabled [[network bridge]]s to locate loops in a [[local area network]] (LAN). It was required that the protocol should use a constant amount of memory when implemented on the network devices, regardless of how large the network was. Building and expanding bridged networks was difficult because loops, where more than one path leads to the same destination, could result in the collapse of the network. Redundant paths in the network meant that a bridge could forward a frame in multiple directions. Therefore loops could cause [[Ethernet|Ethernet frames]] to fail to reach their destination, thus flooding the network. Perlman utilized the fact that bridges had unique 48 bit [[MAC addresses]], and devised a network protocol so that bridges within the LAN communicated with one another. The algorithm implemented on all bridges in the network allowed the bridges to designate one ''root bridge'' in the network. Each bridge then mapped the network and determined the shortest path to the root bridge, deactivating other redundant paths. Despite Perlman's concerns that it took the spanning tree protocol about a minute to react when changes in the [[network topology]] occurred, during which time a loop could bring down the network, it was standardized as 802.1d by the [[Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers]] (IEEE). Perlman said that the benefits of the protocol amount to the fact that "you don't have to worry about topology" when changing the way a LAN is connected. Perlman has however criticized changes which were made in the course of the standardization of the protocol.<ref name="Juneau 103">{{cite journal| last = Juneau| first = Lucie| date = 18 Oct 1992| title = Radia Perlman| journal = Network World| volume = 9| issue = 41| page = 103| issn = 0887-7661}}</ref>
 
Perlman published a poem on STP, called 'Algorhyme':<ref name=algorhyme>{{Cite journal|title=An Algorithm for Distributed Computation of a Spanning Tree in an Extended LAN|journal=ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review|publisher=ACM (copied with permission)|volume=15|issue=4|date=September 1985|url=https://www.it.uu.se/edu/course/homepage/datakom/ht06/slides/sta-perlman.pdf}}</ref>
 
{{Poem quote|title=Algorhyme|sign=Radia Perlman|text=
I think that I shall never see
A graph more lovely than a tree.
 
A tree whose crucial property
Is loop-free connectivity.
 
A tree which must be sure to span
So packets can reach every LAN.
 
First the root must be selected.
By ID it is elected.
 
Least cost paths from root are traced.
In the tree these paths are placed.
 
A mesh is made by folks like me
Then bridges find a spanning tree.
}}
 
=== Other network protocols ===
Perlman was the principal designer of the [[DECnet]] IV and V protocols, and [[IS-IS]],<ref>{{cite web |last1=Eastlake |first1=Donald |title=TRILL History |url=https://datatracker.ietf.org/meeting/101/materials/slides-101-trill-trill-history-01 |website=IETF Datatracker}}</ref> the [[OSI protocols|OSI]] equivalent of [[OSPF]]. She also made major contributions to the [[Connectionless Network Protocol]] (CLNP). Perlman has collaborated with [[Yakov Rekhter]] on developing [[network routing]] standards, such as the OSI Inter-Domain Routing Protocol (IDRP),<ref>{{cite web |title=Inter-Domain Routing Protocol |url=https://www.iso.org/standard/21417.html |website=ISO/IEC}}</ref> the OSI equivalent of [[BGP]]. At DEC she also oversaw the transition from [[Distance-vector routing protocol|distance vector]] to [[link-state routing protocol]]s. Link-state routing protocols had the advantage that they adapted to changes in the network topology faster, and DEC's link-state routing protocol was second only to the link-state routing protocol of the [[Advanced Research Projects Agency Network]] (ARPANET). While working on the [[DECnet]] project Perlman also helped to improve the ''intermediate-system to intermediate-system'' routing protocol, known as [[IS-IS]], so that it could route the [[Internet Protocol]] (IP), [[AppleTalk]] and the [[Internetwork Packet Exchange]] (IPX) protocol.<ref name="Juneau 103"/> The [[Open Shortest Path First]] (OSPF) protocol relied in part on Perlman's research on fault-tolerant broadcasting of routing information.<ref>{{cite web|title=Open Shortest Path First |last=Cisco.com |url=http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Open_Shortest_Path_First}}</ref>
 
Perlman subsequently worked as a network engineer for [[Sun Microsystems]], now [[Oracle Corporation|Oracle]]. She specialized in network and security protocols and while working for Oracle and obtained more than 50 patents.<ref name="Salim 10–12"/>
 
When standarizing her work on [[TRILL]], a combined bridging and routing protocol that proposes to supersede [[spanning tree protocol|STP]], she included version 2 of the earlier "Algorhyme":{{Ref RFC|6325}}
 
{{Poem quote|title=Algorhyme V2|sign=Ray Perlman|source=RFC 6325|text=
I hope that we shall one day see
A graph more lovely than a tree.
 
A graph to boost efficiency
While still configuration-free.
 
A network where RBridges can
Route packets to their target LAN.
 
The paths they find, to our elation,
Are least cost paths to destination!
 
With packet hop counts we now see,
The network need not be loop-free!
 
RBridges work transparently,
Without a common spanning tree.
}}
 
== Awards ==
Line 57 ⟶ 110:
*[[Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery]], class of 2016<ref>{{citation|title=ACM Recognizes New Fellows|journal=[[Communications of the ACM]]|date=March 2017|volume=60|issue=3|page=23|doi=10.1145/3039921|last1=Cacm Staff|s2cid=31701275}}.</ref>
 
== ReferencesBibliography ==
 
* {{ cite book | title = Interconnections: Bridges, Routers, Switches, and Internetworking Protocols | edition = 2 | year = 1999 | publisher = [[Addison-Wesley]] Professional Computing Series | first = Radia | last = Perlman | isbn = 978-0-201-63448-8 }}
# Johnson, S. (n.d.). THE MAGIC BOX AND THE SPANNING TREE: HOW RADIA PERLMAN MADE THE INTERNET WORK| Hidden Heroes. <nowiki>https://hiddenheroes.netguru.com/radia-perlman</nowiki>
* {{cite book|title = Network Security: Private Communication in a Public World| last1 = Perlman | first1 = Radia | last2 = Kaufman | first2 = Charlie | last3 = Speciner | first3 = Mike | last4 = Perlner | first4 = Ray | publisher = [[Addison-Wesley]] Professional | year = 2022 | isbn = 978-0-13-664360-9 |edition = 3}}
# MIT. (n.d.). Radia Perlman Spanning Tree Protocol. Lemelson. <nowiki>https://lemelson.mit.edu/resources/radia-perlman</nowiki>
 
# Radia Perlman. Radia Perlman | National Inventors Hall of Fame® Inductee. (n.d.). <nowiki>https://www.invent.org/inductees/radia-perlman</nowiki>
== References ==
# Rosen, R. J. (2014, March 5). Radia Perlman: Don’t Call Me the Mother of the Internet. The Atlantic. <nowiki>https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/03/radia-perlman-dont-call-me-the-mother-of-the-internet/284146/</nowiki>
{{Reflist}}
 
== External links ==
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