Photo: SimonLyall at English Wikipedia / Public domain (source: Wikimedia Commons)

Van Jacobson

バン・ジェイコブソン　/　ばん・じぇいこぶそん

Computer scientist

January 1, 1950 (age 76)

computer scientist
network engineer

My Take

Van Jacobson belongs in a different category from most names I write about, and I think that is wonderful. If you have ever loaded a webpage, you owe him a quiet thank-you. His work on TCP/IP congestion control and header compression is foundational plumbing of the modern internet, recognized by the Internet Hall of Fame and the SIGCOMM Award. What I admire most is that this is invisible greatness: no spotlight, just the infrastructure everyone unknowingly relies on. That he is still pushing into Named Data Networking at UCLA shows a curiosity that never settled. Among entertainers, having a genuine engineering giant feels like a privilege to feature.

Overview

Van Jacobson is an American computer scientist, renowned for his work on TCP/IP network performance and scaling. He is one of the primary contributors to the TCP/IP protocol stack—the technological foundation of today’s Internet. Since 2013, Jacobson is an adjunct professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) working on Named Data Networking.

Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

1. Profile

Name (English): Van Jacobson
Name (Japanese): バン・ジェイコブソン
Reading: ばん・じぇいこぶそん
Born: January 1, 1950 (age 76)
Zodiac / Chinese zodiac: Capricorn / Tiger
Blood type: Private
Height: Private
Agency: Private
Occupation: computer scientist / network engineer

2. Background

Elementary school: Private
Junior high: Private
High school: Private
University: University of Arizona

Awards & achievements

2001 SIGCOMM Award
2012 Internet Hall of Fame
2002 IEEE Koji Kobayashi Computers and Communications Award

3. Relationships

Spouse: Private
Children: Private
Parents: Private
Siblings: Private

4. Personality

Motto

Private

5. Works & records

Category	Title	Role
Notable work	RFC 2309: Recommendations on Queue Management and Congestion Avoidance in the Internet	—
Notable work	Van Jacobson TCP/IP Header Compression	—
Notable work	RFC 1072: TCP extensions for long-delay paths	—
Notable work	RFC 1185: TCP Extension for High-Speed Paths	—
Notable work	RFC 1144: Compressing TCP/IP Headers for Low-Speed Serial Links	—
Notable work	RFC 1323: TCP Extensions for High Performance	—

6. Links

Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%90%E3%83%B3%E3%83%BB%E3%82%B8%E3%82%A7%E3%82%A4%E3%82%B3%E3%83%96%E3%82%BD%E3%83%B3

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