Paul Baran death news and important information

Paul Baran

Paul Baran death news and important information : Current news updates Paul Baran death news important information. Paul Baran died at age 84 and his son said, whose work with packaging data in the 1960s has been credited with playing a role in the later development of the Internet.

Saturday night of complications from lung cancer, David Baran told the Associated Press Sunday night. Baran died at his home in Palo Alto, Calif.

Mr Baran thought up the idea of making communication networks resilient to attack or traffic surges by splitting the data sent over them into chunks.

His pioneering work was carried out in connection with Cold War military research

Baran outlined the concept while working on Cold War issues for the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica in 1963 and 1964.

In 1969 the technology became a concept the Department of Defense used in creating the Arpanet, the precursor to the Internet, numerous reports on the subject said.
The idea had been so advanced at its development that private companies had passed on it.

Mr Baran first put forward the idea of slicing data into “message blocks” and using a distributed system of nodes to pass them on when working at the Rand Corporation in the mid-1960s.

In his initial conception, Mr Baran said the system would operate by what he called “hot-potato routing”.

The work was done as part of a project to keep telecommunications networks operating even if a large part of them was knocked out by a first strike nuclear attack.

The system would be better able to withstand an attack because it lacked a central hub through which all data or messages passed.

This work found new relevance during the early days of the Arpanet, a network designed to aid US scientists communicate and which laid the foundations of the modern-day internet.

“The process of technological developments is like building a cathedral,” he told the Times in a 1990 interview. “Over the course of several hundred years, new people come along and each lays down a block on top of the old foundations, each saying, I built a cathedral…. If you are not careful you can con yourself into believing that you did the most important part.”

Baran’s wife since 1955 Evelyn died in 2007. He is survived by his son, of Atherton, Calif., and three grandchildren.