Jon Postel quotes

A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A route indicates how we get there. (Jon Postel)
TCP implementations will follow a general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others. View quote
Jon Postel
In general, an implementation must be conservative in its sending behavior, and liberal in its receiving behavior. View quote
Jon Postel
God, at least in the West, is often represented as a man with a flowing beard and sandals... if the Net does have a god, he is probably Jon Postel, a man who matches that description to a T. Mr. Postel's claim to cyber-divinity, besides his appearance, is that he is the chairman and, in effect, the sole member of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, the organization that coordinates almost all Internet addresses. View quote
Jon Postel
Being in the limelight has its minuses. View quote
Jon Postel
The Internet works because a lot of people cooperate to do things together. View quote
Jon Postel
The world wide web has really been quite spectacular and not something I would have predicted. View quote
Jon Postel
Group discussion is very valuable; group drafting is less productive. View quote
Jon Postel
He worked quietly for years as keeper of the RFCs and final arbiter in technical matters when consensus couldn't be reached. Postel believed that decisions he had made in the course of his work over the years had been for the good of the community and that starting a company to profit from those activities would have amounted to a violation of public trust. View quote
Jon Postel
There was one issue on which there seemed to be almost unanimity: the Internet should not be managed by any government, national or multinational. View quote
Jon Postel
I also administer the Internet Assigned Names Authority, which is the central coordinator for the Internet address space, domain names and Internet protocol conventions essential to the use and operation of the Internet. (Jon Postel)
In a chemistry class there was a guy sitting in front of me doing what looked like a jigsaw puzzle or some really weird kind of thing. He told me he was writing a computer program. View quote
Jon Postel
Corporate documents, like football game plans, are not easily drafted in a stadium, with thousands of very interested fans participating, each with their own red pencil, trying to reach a consensus on every word. View quote
Jon Postel
The overriding rule, if you want to run a domain, is to be fair. View quote
Jon Postel
That was clearly surprising, interesting - a very interesting milestone was when you can pick up a magazine and read an article about some sort of computer related thing and they mention the word internet without explaining it. View quote
Jon Postel
Everyone should have ten megabits and then the web will be a wonderful thing. View quote
Jon Postel
But I do have a computer at home and a pretty good ISDN connection. View quote
Jon Postel
One way to get high speed to the home is over cable systems. View quote
Jon Postel
I got involved when I was a graduate student at UCLA when UCLA was the first site on the net. View quote
Jon Postel
I think that audio and video over the internet in the sense of teleconferencing and telephone calls. Maybe we'll actually have picture phone through your work station. View quote
Jon Postel
Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others. (Jon Postel)
Of course, there isn't any "God of the Internet." The Internet works because a lot of people cooperate to do things together. View quote
Jon Postel
I think they called me the closest thing to a God of the Internet. But at the end, that article wasn't very complimentary, because the author suggested that I wasn't doing a very good job, and that I ought to be replaced by a "professional." View quote
Jon Postel
If you're in charge of managing domain name space you should treat everybody who asks for a registration the same. Whatever that is - whether it's nice or ugly or whatever - just be fair, treat them all the same. View quote
Jon Postel
But as soon as we got that higher speed access to the home there's going to be a tremendous crunch on the backbones for a much higher speed bandwidth. People really ought to be planning for that. View quote
Jon Postel