Brian Kantor, Internet and AMPRNet Pioneer, WB6CYT, Dies

Jeff Archambeault (Slashdot reader #41,488) writes: Amateur Radio and computing worlds mourn the death of another pioneer.

From Phil Karn, KA9Q on the the 44Net mailing list:

I have very sad news. My good friend, Brian Kantor, WB6CYT suddenly passed away this week at his home in San Diego, California. Brian retired only two years ago after 47 years of service on the staff at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). Way back in the mid 1980s, Brian and I founded AMPRnet, the TCP/IP over amateur radio network. He continued to manage it until his passing.

Brian recently created and served as chair and CEO of Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC), a charitable foundation funded by the sale of unused AMPRnet IPv4 addresses. ARDC promotes STEM education and amateur radio digital development through scholarships and by funding the development of open source hardware and software.

Brian will be sorely missed and impossible to replace. Memorial arrangements will be announced when known.
Brian Rogers, N1URO, author of URONode packet software added:

Brian was an interesting yet friendly character unlike anything you'd imagine for someone of his status. He invented things such as eMail (smtp) and usenet (nntp) along with half of the VPN services of ipip. In doing so, he not only helped the amateur community world wide but also the general public globally.

One would think that he wouldn't be an approachable type of person however nothing could be farther from the truth. He was very approachable and would try to offer anyone a hand if he could.

The world has no idea who they're going to miss as someone of his statue is simply irreplace-able!

Re:

[deviated_prevert]

Do these losers always use the same Swastika ASCII art or do they vary it up from time to time? Seems to me like it would be somewhat trivial to filter and remove ASCII hate art like this. Or just filter out any ASCII art period since the only ones who seem to use it here are loser antisocial bums. I love Slashdot dearly, but I think it's time for Slashdot to step it up a bit and filter this crap or I'm tempted to leave. This is getting out of hand.

Don't worry the kid is a new user and obviously another POS in the parents basement closet nazi moron who can quickly cut and paste a troll faster than we can get to a new post. Too bad slashdot cannot cut off the assholes firehose and it seems to not rise to a good challenge and explain why it deserves to keep a slashdot user account. I hope the jackass is banned by tomorrow. www.curbstomper.de [curbstomper.de] is obviously a nobody looking to make an impression by being another little asshole with a valid email address.

Re:

[cusco]

Yes, no one is going to miss another Anonymous Coward. Or **any** of them, really.

Re:

[duketor]

Mr. Brock has told you repeatedly that what goes for bait at Unit 8200 does not work on the wider internet in the USA anymore. Please log out. Security will meet you at your desk.

Besides, who cares if he journeyed from east to west or not?

WB6CYT TNX FER ALL CU SN VY 73 SK

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

dit
dit

Silent Key

[Freshly Exhumed]

RIP SK
73

73

[sibsybcys]

Thank you.

73,
-N3JAI

“Statue”

[Corbets]

/sigh I wish we would stop referring to them as “Slashdot editors” when they clearly don’t bother with the activity.

sale of ham radio ip addresses

[throwaway18]

Brian Kantor and the other amprnet directors sold a quarter of the ip addresses allocated for amateur radio, four million addresses 44.192.0.0/10 to Amazon for millions of dollars.

They are still keeping the exact figure a secret, next financial filing will be early next year.

Re:sale of ham radio ip addresses

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

And that was smart. Read this [ampr.org] to know why. To summarize the page:

- We were given a bunch of IPs when they were worthless.
- The value of IP (now v4) blocks has increased as the address space got filled up, and a market for them has appeared. Suddenly we were sitting on a pile of cash.
- One day IPv6 will be widely adopted, and the value of IPv4 adresses will go down.
- Only one third of our address space is used by hams - down from one half.
- Therefore we're cashing out when the value of IPv4 addresses is still high to fund our nonprofit.

Pretty good management I would say. I only wish they hadn't sold them to Amazon - but that's not their problem.

Re:

[duketor]

Repeaters are being taken offline since cartels of all kinds were discovered using those Baofeng dirty units from China. Hard to wiretap too, since CALEA never applied.

Re:

[tlhIngan]

Repeaters are being taken offline since cartels of all kinds were discovered using those Baofeng dirty units from China. Hard to wiretap too, since CALEA never applied.

Not hard to wiretap, just stick up an antenna. It's just bog standard narrowband FM in the clear.

Wiretaps are only necessary because cellphones are far more complex in their on-air signalling and all that. Ham radio is pretty primitive by comparison simply because it has to be "in the open".

Made me chuckle once when a prepper was saying you s

I only wish ...

[bdemchak]

Brian had an office down the hall from the grad student lab I was in. One day, I needed a jumper for a disk drive ... who would have something unusual like that? The word was to "go see Brian".

His office was a wreck ... actually, controlled chaos. Tons of bins of everything I could imagine (and some I couldn't), papers everywhere, and still enough room for both him and at least one guest. I was surprised when he offered a *selection* of jumpers, and made a mental note to come back whenever I needed something cool. He had the goods. And as sorry as I was to have to bother him (... I didn't even know what he did, but he seemed important ...), I was all the sorrier because he was so darned nice about it.

I've had this regret before ... I was once sitting with Roger Revelle at UCSD and didn't even ask him what he'd done. Now I regret years of opportunities to sit with Brian, too, and get to learn about him, what he did, and what he thinks.

Will I ever learn??

Thanks, Brian, for the jumper ... and Godspeed!

Re:I only wish ...

[postbigbang]

Much of "modern" computing today came at the hands of helpful hams. Like other parallels, a sign of a clean ham shack is by an operator that never makes any contacts and buys all of his stuff rather than making it.

Hams were among the first of the maker communities, and drove the microcomputer revolution that we enjoy today, even inventing or developing the guts of the smartphones most people use. Of course, UCSD was a pioneering school for its advancement of Pascal, and a myriad other activities. And after class, you could surf.

Brian was indeed a pioneer, and a long-term thinker. We need more. GetRichTech seems more important than BetterWorldTech, and the ven diagram has rarer intersections.

Re:

[Phil Karn]

What a wonderful little anecdote! That was Brian, all right.

Phil Karn, KA9Q

RIP Brian

[dod1450]

Brain and I had many phone calls issuing IP addresses and finding the old coordinator. Then I became the Silicon Valley coordinator. I will miss our phone and email conversations. San Francisco/Silicon Valley AmprNet Co-coordinator [44.4.0.0/16]

Wait ... he invented SMTP?

[ScentCone]

If he invented SMTP, I'm going to skip the memorial. That man was a monster.

Get off my LAN!

[BobC]

Brian and I both graduated UCSD in 1986, and though we had only one class together during that time (in computer graphics), more importantly we shared an interest in networking. Brian was much better able to take the "big picture" perspective, while I preferred to hack code and munge packets.

We kept bumping into each other in various research computing labs, where I had gained access because nobody was using them, and he was trying to figure out why they weren't being used in the first place. It was always the networking. I'd whip up a low-level kluge to, say, get NFS working, that he'd "ask" me to remove when the real fix was ready. After which I'd lose access, when the intended users came flooding back.

Time and again I'd find isolated systems and sneak them onto the student network, only to have Brian chase me off before long. My favorites were early workstations (such as the Sun 1) that had been retired when newer models arrived. Most were moved to basements and "retired in place", often to be used as simple print servers. Which always had spare cycles of which a CPU-starved student could take advantage. Until Brian arrived. Again.

I vividly remember the first day of that graphics class. I was surprised to see Brian, until then knowing him only through his professional responsibilities, primarily the times he had kicked me off systems. I suspected he took that section of the class so he could keep a closer eye on me... Which he always denied.

Brian and I were both "working our way through college", but from just about opposite perspectives. I had an outside part-time job to pay for full-time classes, and he had a full-time job on campus that allowed him to take classes part-time. I suspect completing his degree may have been a surprise to him, that all the various classes he had taken over the years eventually met the requirements of any degree.

Brian and I weren't acquainted in any context outside of UCSD and networking, but having a few shared stories was always fun when we'd occasionally bump into each other, typically at local conventions.