Radia Perlman: How This Woman Transformed the Internet
“Constantly question why things are the way they are.”
** This interview first appeared in my newsletter here.**
I wanted to share an interview from my archive with you. As this year marks 35 years since Radia Perlman invented the algorithm for implementing a spanning tree protocol (STP), I thought it a great time to share her story which originally appeared in my book, Female Innovators at Work.
Radia’s invention (one of many patents she holds) transformed the Ethernet from technology which was limited to a few hundred nodes confined to a single building into a technology that could handle massive networks and thus laying the groundwork for the internet as we know it today.
Radia Perlman is a distinguished inventor, network engineer, software designer, IEEE Fellow, and respected author. She has made countless contributions to the internet and her innovations enable today’s link-state routing protocols to be robust, scalable, and easy to manage. Radia improved the spanning tree–based Ethernet by also designing TRILL (TRansparent Interconnection of Lots of Links), which allows the Ethernet to make optimal use of bandwidth.
As an undergraduate at MIT, Radia undertook what was known as an Undergraduate Research…
