Steve Wolff

Early developer of the Internet

• Born: c. 1936?
• Place of Birth: place unknown

Primary Company/Organization: ARPANET

Introduction

Steve Wolff was a seminal figure in the early development of the Internet, particularly through popularizing the network with leading decision makers and helping to make its potential clear. This has led to his classification as one of a small group of people regarded as fathers of the Internet. He was involved with the creation of ARPANET and numerous other important developments in a career lasting more than fifty years.

Early Life

Stephen S. “Steve” Wolff received a bachelor's degree with highest honors in electrical engineering from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania in 1957. He earned a doctoral degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University in 1961. He followed this with postdoctoral work in 1962 at Imperial College, London, under Colin Cherry and Dennis Gabor. Then he returned to the United States and taught electrical engineering at Johns Hopkins University for a decade, specializing in statistical communication theory.

Life's Work

Wolff began his close involvement with the development of the Internet when he became a communications technology researcher for the U.S. Army in 1981; he worked for the Army for fourteen years. He led a team that introduced Unix to the Army and was part of the team working on the Advanced Research Projects Agency network, ARPANET. This was the principal forerunner of the Internet and, through the use of data packet switching, represented something of a paradigm switch in network communication through changing from a one-to-one to a many-to-many model of communication. The development of the networks moved in parallel with technological and engineering capabilities, and each stimulated progress in the other.

In 1986, Wolff joined the National Science Foundation (NSF) as divisional director for network and communications research and was responsible for establishing NSFNET, which was intended to link academic institutions as a means of promoting research and scholarship. When asked to create the NSF network, Wolff said that it would be easy; the Army's ARPANET could simply be reproduced. When everything was up and running, Ron Natalie, a member of the team, telephoned the NSF network operations center to give them the good news. Wolff's team was disheartened when the people at the center were in complete disbelief. Wolff told his team that it did not matter what they had said or who had done what to get the network running; all that mattered was that it worked.

NSFNET was also a part of ARPANET. Wolff's role not only was technological in nature but also somewhat evangelical, in that he persuaded potential stakeholders of the importance of networked communications and the benefits it could bring. It is in this aspect and the visionary imagination that fueled it that Wolff's principal contribution lies. From the moment he joined NSF, Wolff realized that the group needed to get research collaborators who were overseas linked to the network. He struck a deal with International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) whereby NSF would pay half the cost of all international lines if IBM would run the transmission-control protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP) on the lines and connect with the NSF network.

Under Wolff's direction, the system was transformed and expanded from an ad hoc 56 kilobits per second (kbps) backbone to a T1 and later T3 backbone. Much of the credit for the rapid expansion of the Internet goes to Wolff for tirelessly enlisting regional and campus links and seeking funding for international network links. When he received the prestigious Jonathan B. Postel Service Award from the Internet Society (ISOC) in 2002, his leadership in fostering cooperation in the growth of the Internet was specifically mentioned.

While at NSF, Wolff was part of the gigabit testbed project that was jointly funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

In 1995, Wolff joined Cisco Systems and took responsibility for the University Research Project (URP), which had an annual budget of some $1.5 million for academic researchers looking for new ways to develop and use network communications. He was also involved with Internet2 (which he later joined full time) and the Abilene project: Abilene was a new-generation, optical fiber network (with optical fiber networks provided by Qwest Communications and in cooperation with Cisco, Nortel, and Indiana University) which offered a major advance in network connectivity and later became the Internet2 network (which is separate from the organization).

Beginning in 2011, Wolff was the interim vice president and chief technology officer of Internet2, an advanced networking consortium that links government agencies, universities, and research centers and private sector corporations to promote the development and use of Internet-based technologies so that partners can achieve their objectives. He later served as a principal scientist for Internet2. In 2013, Wolff was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame.

Personal Life

Wolff has been a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a life member of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and a pioneer member of the ISOC. He and Jonathan Postel raced to complete the membership form and submit their payments, each trying to be the first member of the ISOC. Postel won.

Bibliography

“Abilene Network Establishes Coast-to-Coast Connectivity.” 20 Jan. 1999. University Information Technology Service, Indiana University. Web. 12 July 2012.

Bass, Ryan. “Steve Wolff Named New Internet2 Interim Vice President and Chief Technology Officer.” Internet2 News. 31 Mar. 2011. Web. 12 July 2012.

Malamud, Carl. Exploring the Internet: A Technical Travelogue. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1992. Print.

Leiner, Barry M., et al. “Brief History of the Internet.” n.d. Internet Society. Web. 12 July 2012.

Salus, Peter H. Casting the Net: From ARPANET to Internet and Beyond. Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1995. Print.

"Stephen Wolff." Internet Hall of Fame, 2024, www.internethalloffame.org/inductee/stephen-wolff/. Accessed 8 Mar. 2024.

Waltner, Charles. “Steve Wolff—Hustling for Innovation.” Cisco Newsroom. 30 July 2002. Web. 12 July 2012.