Jen Linkova receives the final Itojun Service Award at IETF 121

Jen Linkova receives the Itojun Service Award at IETF 121. © IETF Trust/Stonehouse Photographic.

At IETF 121 in Dublin, IIJ and ISOC presented the final Itojun Service Award to Jen Linkova for tireless and selfless efforts to make IPv6 deployable in enterprise networks. Jen's consistent, ongoing advocacy and protocol refinement in standards processes for IPv6 fully deserved recognition. Kenjiro Cho (director, IIJ Research Laboratory) and Sally Wentworth (President and Chief Executive Officer, ISOC and ISOC Foundation) made the presentation.

The award is named after Dr Jun-ichiro 'Itojun' Hagino, who passed away in 2007 at 37. Itojun was a senior researcher at IIJ, a member of the WIDE Project and developed the IPv6 stack in the KAME Project, which became the foundation of IPv6 in BSD UNIX. This was a transformative contribution to the field, leading to a massive worldwide uptake of IPv6 on this platform as the code was released. IPv6's impact is comparable to the BSD4.2 initiative, which released sockets and IPv4.

With the shift in IPv6 deployment from individual contributions to more structured, organizational efforts, the Itojun Award Committee has decided to conclude the prize. As the final recipient, Jen is a fitting choice, continuing the legacy that began with Eric Kline and Lorenzo Colitti (also from Google, where Jen works) receiving the inaugural award in 2009. Other past recipients include Bjoern A. Zeeb (2010), Alexandre Cassen and Rémi Després (2011), and John Jason Brzozowski, Donn Lee, and Paul Saab (2012).

Read more about Jen Linkova's Itojun Service Award.

The views expressed by the authors of this blog are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of APNIC. Please note a Code of Conduct applies to this blog.