I posted this nomination for the John B. Postel Service Award today…
I strongly recommend Dave Täht for the Postel Service Award. Regrettably, this must be posthumous.
I first learned about Dave when I stumbled on his post talking about experiments with the CeroWRT software to decrease latency in home routers. This must have been in late 2011. At the time I had 7mbps/768kbps DSL connection. I was happy to have that connection since it was much better than dialup.
But I had also noticed that it would sometimes get REALLY SLOW when multiple people at my house were using the connection. This phenomenon came to be known as Bufferbloat. Since I was already familiar with flashing home routers, I tried CeroWRT and worked with Dave to test it. When fq_codel arrived in May 2012, it provided the first solid fix to the problem.
Over the years, I worked with Dave and others on the Bufferbloat team to refine the instructions and other content on the original Redmine site and later the bufferbloat.net site. As a side result, Dave crowned me the "Chief Doc Guy", a title I proudly accepted.
Dave worked tirelessly over the years, first to identify the problem of latency, to make improvements, and then collaborate with anyone who was willing to help address it. His impatience with the pace of its rollout helped him goad many people into finding ways to incorporate the solution into a wider and wider set of implementations.
Dave Täht is truly an Internet Hero, and deserves the Postel award.
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