Speaker: Dr. David Sincoskie, Vice President of Telcordia and Member of National Academy of Engineering

Title: Packet Switching Comes of Age: From Research to Commercial Development

Date and Time: January 28 (Friday), 2005, 3 pm
Place: 143 Coates Hall, LSU
Reception: Same Location, 4 Pm

 

Abstract:

After the successful experiment with the Arpanet in the 1970's, in the mid 1980's the government had to face the success problem: how to transition what would later be called the internet into a commercial industry? At about the same time, telecommunications researchers in industrial labs around the world were beginning to experiment with the broadband packet switching at speeds of 150 megabits per second and above. This talk will give the speaker's personal perspective on how these two discrete activities became intertwined, and in the process evolved into today's Internet.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Sincoskie is Group Senior Vice President of the Network Systems Research Laboratory at Telcordia (formerly Bellcore). The laboratory consists of over 100 researchers involved in many aspects of Internet and broadband networking. Major areas of activity in the lab are Internet network management, mobile and ad-hoc Internet, wireless communications, and optical network management.

He received his Ph.D. degree in E.E. from University of Delaware in 1980. From 1980 to 1983, he worked for Bell Laboratories, where he installed the first Ethernet LAN. In 1983, he joined Telcordia. For the first few years, he was District Manager of the Computer Communications Research group, where he worked on Internet telephony and invented the Virtual LAN. From 1986-1990, he managed the Packet Communications Research Department. During 1990-1992, working with a consortium of computer vendors, he co-authored the first specifications for Local ATM, which were later adopted by the ATM Forum.

From 1990 to 1996, Dr. Sincoskie was Executive Director of the Computer Networking Research Department at Telcordia. He managed a group working on the AURORA gigabit testbed, IPv6, IP over ATM, NSFNET, and broadband service control. He was the Project Director for two operational NSFNET Network Access Points, Chicago and San Francisco, which today interconnect approximately 150 Internet service providers.

Dr. Sincoskie is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the IEEE. He received the University of Delaware's Distinguished Electrical Engineering Alumnus award in 1994 and the Bellcore President's award in 1993. In 2003, he received the IEEE Fred W. Ellersick prize paper award. He is also an adjunct Professor of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania.