Geoff Mulligan

Geoff Mulligan is an American computer scientist notable for developing the embedded internet and creating the concept of 6LoWPAN. As of 2013, he is a Presidential Innovation Fellow working on the Cyber-Physical Systems Project for the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), is Chairman of the IPSO Alliance and works as a consultant on international standards, protocol design and security for the Internet of Things.

Contents

Life and Career Published Works Congressional Testimony

Life and Career

Geoff grew up in Palo Alto and started programming computers at the age of 9. He was hired to “hack” the Tymshare Network at the age of 15. While attending Gunn High School, he interned at NASA Ames Research Center developing the software for the wind tunnel testing of the 747 space shuttle transport system.

After graduating from the Air Force Academy in 1979 with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science, his first assignment was to the Pentagon. While there, Geoff brought the first UNIX system online to the ARPAnet for the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and Joint Chiefs of Staff. Geoff also consulted on the design of the Defense Data Network, focusing on security and performance, and designed and directed installation of the Pentagon’s OPSnet, which was one of the first data networks that used cable TV technology.

After the Pentagon, Geoff was chosen to return to the Air Force Academy as Division Chief of Network and Unix Systems where he oversaw the design and installation of the Academy's local area network (FALCONnet). During this assignment he earned his Masters in Computer Information Sciences at the University of Denver and taught graduate and undergraduate courses for the Air Force Academy, University of Denver, Webster University and Chapman College.

In 1990, Geoff joined Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC Labs) in Palo Alto. His research focused on network security, electronic mail, TCP/IP networking, networking tools and firewall technology. He was an architect of the DEC SEAL firewall and was a member of the multi-corporation Bay Area Gigabit Network design team and the original IPv6 protocol design team.

Geoff began working at Sun Microsystems in 1992 in the Internet Engineering Group, focusing on TCP/IP. He was responsible for development and maintenance of the Solaris user level TCP/IP utilities and kernel development. He also worked on the design and support of Sun's Wide Area Network and firewall complex. Geoff continued with the IPv6 design team and wrote the first PC based implementation, along with a packet decoder and worked on the development of an IPv4/IPv6 border gateway. Geoff joined Sun's Internet Commerce Group as a founding member, where he was the principal architect of Sun's firewall product, Sunscreen SPF 100.

During a sabbatical from Sun, he helped launch a new Internet company, USA.NET, and created their NetAddress permanent e-mail address and email-outsourcing product. Additionally, Geoff oversaw operations of a private network, which supplied Internet access to over 6,000 customers in four states.

Geoff returned to Sun to complete the development of the next generation of Sunscreen adding network address translation and topology hiding technologies. He was the group's Chief Technologist and Security Products Evangelist. In 1997, he created HZ.COM, an electronic mail information retrieval system for two-way pagers and early cell phones, one of the first portals of its kind. HZ.COM's Information on Demand services provided access to information ‘when you want it, where you want it'. When the HZ.COM domain was hijacked in 2002, the incident was featured in the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Security and Stability Advisory Committee's report of 2005. Geoff left Sun to co-found Geocast Network Systems, where he was responsible for operating system design and support, as well as network architecture for the evolving Internet multicast communication technology that the company was developing. Following Geocast, Geoff co-founded Interosa as the company's Chief Technology Officer and Architect and, subsequently, Chief Executive Officer. Interosa was building a new policy-based privacy technology for digital content and an email privacy system that was based on their new technology. In July of 2000, InterosaMail was chosen by the Electronic Messaging Association as the Best of Show for Emerging Technology, but due to funding issues, the company was shut down in November of 2000.

In 2001, Geoff was hired by Invensys as the Chief Scientist for the Home Controls Division, where he worked on resource and energy management technology, including home gateway design and development, web based tools, and low power, low speed, low cost RF (aka 802.15.4 and Zigbee). He focused on developing protocols for the emerging smart grid project – Good Watts - and worked on a project to put wireless IPv6 communications in smoke alarms and appliances.

He was one of the founding board members of the Zigbee Alliance and was co-chair of the 6LoWPAN Working Group in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Most notably, Geoff wrote the first embedded IPv6 implementation and created and named 6LoWPAN. In 2006, Geoff started the consulting firm, Proto6, where he worked for Fortune 500 companies and the US Department of Defense. Geoff worked with others to begin the Internet Protocol for Smart Objects (IPSO) Alliance in 2008. Geoff has served as chairman for the Alliance since its inception. In 2013, Geoff was invited to become one of the Round 2 Presidential Innovation Fellows, working on the Cyber-Physical Systems. These new "smart systems" will combine networking, information and communication technologies to optimize system performance in real time.

Published Works

Geoff holds over 15 patents in computer security, networking and electronic mail. In 1999, Geoff wrote "Removing the Spam: Email Processing and Filtering". The book explains the operation and management of two widely distributed Unix e-mail tools: Sendmail and Procmail.

Congressional Testimony

In 1997, Geoff was called upon to testify before Congress on electronic commerce and computer security. The Committee on Science held a briefing on Secure Communications in February, which was the second in a series of briefings on Computer Security. The theme of the briefing was the need to protect the confidential nature of private communications and to ensure that stored proprietary data remains uncompromised. Geoff spoke on "Security Through Containment", explaining how networks are designed and built to facilitate the sharing and distribution of data and information, while the goal of security is to limit and control the distribution of information. One method for providing both connectivity and security is through the use of containment.