Gigabit Guru Farber Sees Surprises In High-Speed Networks

****** Editor's note: David Farber, a professor of computer and information sciences at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, says he has developed a keen interest in high- speed computer networking through "20 years of being buried inside of networks." He started work at Bell Telephone Labs, now called AT&T Bell Laboratories, in Murray Hill, N.J., where he was involved in the design of the first electronic central office and was an originator of SNOBOL, a symbolic- and string-manipu

Written byScott Veggeberg

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Editor's note: David Farber, a professor of computer and information sciences at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, says he has developed a keen interest in high- speed computer networking through "20 years of being buried inside of networks." He started work at Bell Telephone Labs, now called AT&T Bell Laboratories, in Murray Hill, N.J., where he was involved in the design of the first electronic central office and was an originator of SNOBOL, a symbolic- and string-manipulation programming language. At the University of Delaware, he was a cofounder of CSNet and "one of the instigators" of NSFNET, which is funded by the National Science Foundation and is one of the largest computer networks allowing the free interchange of electronic mail and data.

After his arrival in Philadelphia three years ago, Farber and Robert Kahn, president of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, based in Reston, Va., were instrumental ...

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