Yakov Rekhter

One of the leading architects and a major software developer of the NSFNET Backbone Phase II, Rekhter also co-designed the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), the core routing protocol of the Internet.

Rekhter joined Juniper Networks in December 2000, where he has served as a Juniper Fellow. Prior to joining Juniper, he worked at Cisco Systems, where he served as 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), and was 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 has been 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. Rekhter is the author or co-author of 69 IETF RFCs, and numerous papers and articles on TCP/IP and the Internet. His books include "MPLS: Technology and Applications" (Morgan Kauffman, 2000) and "Switching in IP Networks: IP Switching, Tag Switching and Related Technologies" (Morgan Kauffman, 1998).