Yakov Rekhter

Yakov Rekhter is a well-known network protocol designer and software programmer. He was heavily involved in internet protocol development, and its predecessors, from their early stages. Dr. Rekhter was one of the leading architects and a major software developer of the NSFNET Backbone Phase II. He co-designed the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), the core routing protocol of the Internet. He 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 more than 80 IETF RFCs, and numerous papers and articles on TCP/IP and the Internet. His recent books include: MPLS: Technology and Applications (Morgan Kaufmann, 2000) and Switching in IP Networks: IP Switching, Tag Switching and Related Technologies (Morgan Kaufmann, 1998). Rekhter joined Juniper Networks in December 2000, where he was a Juniper Fellow until retiring in January 2015. Prior to joining Juniper, Yakov worked at Cisco Systems, where he was a Cisco Fellow. Prior to joining Cisco in 1995, he was a scientist at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. In 2021 he was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame In 2025 he received the IEEE Internet Award "“For contributions enabling the creation of a scalable, robust and policy-based Internet.”

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