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David Boggs

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This article is about the co-inventor of Ethernet. For the stock car driver, see David Ray Boggs.

David Boggs
Born(1950-06-17)June 17, 1950
Washington, D.C., U.S.
DiedFebruary 19, 2022(2022-02-19) (aged 71)
Stanford, California, U.S.
Alma materPrinceton University (B.S.E.)
Stanford University (Ph.D.)
Known forCo-invention of Ethernet
AwardsIEEE Computer Society Technical Achievement Award (1988)
ACM Fellow, AAAS Fellow
Scientific career
FieldsComputer networking
InstitutionsXerox PARC

David Reeves Boggs (June 17, 1950 – February 19, 2022) was an American electrical and radio engineer who developed early prototypes of Internet protocols, file servers, gateways, network interface cards[1] and, along with Robert Metcalfe and others, co-invented Ethernet, the most popular family of technologies for local area computer networks.[2]

Biography

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David Boggs was born on June 17, 1950, in Washington, D.C., to James Boggs and Jane (McCallum) Boggs.[3] He graduated from the city's Woodrow Wilson High School in 1968, then from Princeton University with a B.S.E. in electrical engineering in 1972.

He joined the Xerox PARC research staff, where he met Robert Metcalfe, who was debugging an Interface Message Processor interface for the PARC systems group.[4][5] Boggs, an amateur radio operator with the call sign WA3DBJ,[6] recognized similarities between Metcalfe's theories and radio broadcasting technologies and joined his project. According to The Economist, "the two would co-invent Ethernet, with Mr Metcalfe generating the ideas and Mr Boggs figuring out how to build the system."[2]

In 1973, they built several Ethernet interfaces for the Xerox Alto, an early personal computer. Xerox filed a patent application on March 31, 1975, naming Metcalfe, Boggs, Chuck Thacker, and Butler Lampson as inventors.[7] After 18 months of work, the published Ethernet's seminal paper in 1976: "Ethernet: Distributed Packet Switching for Local Computer Networks”.[4][8] It would be reprinted in Communications of the ACM in a special 25th-anniversary issue.[9] For a session at the National Computer Conference in June 1976, he produced a slide from a Metcalfe sketch of Ethernet terminology which was widely reprinted.[10] The original prototype circuit is held by the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History.[11]

While working at Xerox, Boggs went to Stanford University for graduate study in electrical engineering; he earned a master's degree in 1973 and a Ph.D. in 1982.[12] He wrote his dissertation on "Internet Broadcasting",[13] a concept that Steve Deering, also at Stanford, later expanded to IP multicasting.[14]

He was also one of the developers of the PARC Universal Packet protocol architecture.[15]

He became a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery and received the IEEE Computer Society technical achievement award in 1988.[16][1]

Boggs worked on the "Titan" project at the Digital Equipment Corporation Western Research Laboratory (DECWRL) after leaving Xerox.[17] He worked as a consultant in Silicon Valley and co-founded LAN Media Corporation with Ron Crane.[18] In July 2000, LMC was acquired by SBE Incorporated and then SBE was acquired by Neonode in 2007.[19][20]

Boggs died of heart failure at Stanford University Medical Center in Stanford, California, on February 19, 2022, at the age of 71.[3]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b "ACM Fellows Citation / David R Boggs". Association for Computing Machinery. Retrieved April 6, 2011.
  2. ^ a b "Case History: Out of the Ether". Technology Quarterly. The Economist. September 4, 2003. Retrieved April 6, 2011.
  3. ^ a b Metz, Cade (February 28, 2022). "David Boggs, Co-Inventor of Ethernet, Dies at 71". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved March 1, 2022.
  4. ^ a b W. Sweet (June 1996). "Profile: Robert Metcalfe". IEEE Spectrum. 33 (6): 48–49, 52–55. doi:10.1109/6.499949.
  5. ^ Wende Vynorney Feller (2007). "Boggs, David R.". In Benjamin F. Shearer (ed.). Home front heroes: a biographical dictionary of Americans during wartime. Vol. 1. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 101–103. ISBN 978-0-313-33421-4.
  6. ^ "WA3DBJ | Amateur Radio Callsign". www.radioreference.com. Retrieved October 31, 2025.
  7. ^ U.S. patent 4,063,220 "Multipoint data communication system (with collision detection)" Filing date March 31, 1975, issued December 13, 1977
  8. ^ Robert M. Metcalfe; David R. Boggs (July 1976). "Ethernet: Distributed Packet Switching for Local Computer Networks". Communications of the ACM. 19 (5): 395–405. doi:10.1145/360248.360253. S2CID 429216.
  9. ^ Robert M. Metcalfe; David R. Boggs (January 1983). "Ethernet: Distributed Packet Switching for Local Computer Networks". Communications of the ACM. 26 (1): 90–95. doi:10.1145/357980.358015. S2CID 30843194.
  10. ^ "The Ethernet Diagram". IEEE standard 802.3 web site. October 21, 2003. Retrieved April 7, 2011.
  11. ^ "Ethernet Prototype Circuit Board". National Museum of American History collections object 1992.0566.01. Retrieved April 6, 2011.
  12. ^ Stanford University (August 1, 1999). "Computer Science Department alumni newsletter". Archived from the original on September 29, 2011. Retrieved April 6, 2011.
  13. ^ David R. Boggs (1982). Internet Broadcasting (phd). Stanford University. Ph.D. Thesis
  14. ^ Stephen E. Deering; David R. Cheriton (May 1990). "Multicast routing in datagram internetworks and extended LANs". ACM Transactions on Computer Systems. 8 (2): 85–110. doi:10.1145/78952.78953. S2CID 15404410.
  15. ^ David R. Boggs; John F. Shoch; Edward A. Taft; Robert M. Metcalfe (April 1980). "Pup: An Internetwork Architecture". IEEE Transactions on Communications. 28 (4): 612–624. doi:10.1109/TCOM.1980.1094684. S2CID 62684407.
  16. ^ IEEE Computer Society. "Past recipients for Technical Achievement Award". Archived from the original on July 25, 2011. Retrieved April 6, 2011.
  17. ^ "David R. Boggs | IEEE Computer Society". April 11, 2018. Retrieved March 1, 2022.
  18. ^ "Team: Board of Directors". Missing Link Electronics web site. Archived from the original on May 22, 2011. Retrieved April 6, 2011.
  19. ^ "SBE Inc. Acquires LAN Media Corporation". news release. San Ramon, California. July 14, 2000. Retrieved April 6, 2011.
  20. ^ "SBE and Neonode Announce Execution of Merger Agreement". news release. San Ramon, California: Business Wire. January 22, 2007. Retrieved April 6, 2011.
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