While we expect our favorite athletes to know the history of their respective sports and teams and to pay homage to the great ones who came before them, why don’t we do the same within technology? In fact, it’s easier to figure out who holds most sports records than it is to find out who invented IPSEC. I too am guilty of taking for granted the contributions of those who worked for R&D powerhouses such as BBN Planet, DARPA, and Bell Labs.

Within technology, there continues to be debates and disputes over who “the father of” or the “inventor of” a particular technology is. It is not my intent to join this debate, but to give my thanks and gratitude to those whose contributions have changed our industry and our lives.

• Bob Metcalfe – Father of Ethernet
• Vinton Cerf AND Robert Kahn – TCP/IP Co-Designers 
•  William Yeager – Creator of Multi-protocol Router
• Vic Hayes – Father of Wi-Fi
• Sven Mattisson and Jaap Haartsen – Inventors of Bluetooth
• Nir Zuk, William Cheswick, Steven Bellovin, Marcus Ranum , and more- Fathers of the Firewall
• Stehpen Kent – Inventor of IPSEC
• Taher Elgamal – inventor of SSL
• Vinod Bhardwaj – Father of Ethernet Switching
• Bernard Daines – Father of Gigabit Ethernet
• Rouzbeh Yassini – Father of the Cable Modem
• Joseph W. Lechleitter – Inventor of DSL Modem
• William Moggridge – Inventor of the Laptop
• John Ansoff, Konrad Zuse, John Mauchly, Presper Eckert, and more – Inventors of the Computer