Dr. Yakov Rekhter

He joined Juniper Networks in Dec 2000, where he is a Juniper Fellow. Prior to joining Juniper, he worked at Cisco Systems, where he was a Cisco Fellow. Prior to joining Cisco in 1995, he worked at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. He was one of the leading architects and a major software developer of the NSFNET Backbone Phase II. He also co-designed the Border Gateway Protocol, the core routing protocol of the Internet (BGP), was also one of the lead designers of Tag Switching (of which MPLS is one form), BGP/MPLS based VPNs, and MPLS Traffic Engineering. Among his most recent activities is the work on MPLS Multicast, Multicast in VPLS, and Multicast in BGP/MPLS VPNs (aka 2547 VPNs). His other contributions to contemporary Internet technology include: GMPLS, Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) and IP address allocation for private Internets. He is the author or co-author of 69 IETF RFCs, and numerous papers and articles on TCP/IP and the Internet. His recent books include: "MPLS: Technology and Applications" (Morgan Kauffman, 2000) and "Switching in IP Networks: IP Switching, Tag Switching and Related Technologies" (Morgan Kauffman, 1998).