VLAN Inventor W. David Sincoskie's Life | Generated by AI
Question: What is the life story of W. David Sincoskie, the inventor of VLAN?
Answer:
Walter David “Dave” Sincoskie (December 21, 1954 – October 20, 2010) was an influential American computer engineer best known for inventing the Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN), a foundational technology in modern networking that allows logical segmentation of networks for improved scalability and performance.
Born in 1954 and raised in Delaware, Sincoskie earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Delaware, where his doctoral advisor was Dave Farber. He was later inducted into the university’s Alumni Wall of Fame in 2006.
His professional career began at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, from 1980 to 1983, where he conducted research in communications. In 1984, he joined the newly formed Bellcore (later Telcordia Technologies), installing the first Ethernet local area network there. As District Manager of the Computer Communications Research group, he worked on early Internet telephony (voice over IP precursors), which led to his invention of VLANs. Facing bottlenecks in scaling Ethernet networks using transparent bridging, Sincoskie developed VLANs by adding tags to Ethernet frames (now standardized as IEEE 802.1Q), enabling multiple virtual networks on shared physical infrastructure.
From 1986 to 1990, he managed the Packet Communications Research Department, advancing the shift from circuit-switching to packet-switching critical for the Internet’s growth. He co-authored the first specifications for Local ATM, adopted by the ATM Forum. From 1990 to 1996, as Executive Director of Computer Networking Research, he oversaw projects including the AURORA gigabit testbed, IPv6, IP over ATM, NSFNET, and broadband services. From 1996 to 2008, he served as Senior Vice President of Telcordia’s Networking Systems Laboratory, pioneering Internet telephony.
In 2008, Sincoskie returned to the University of Delaware as a full professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, founding and directing the Center for Information and Communications Sciences to address national security issues.
He was an IEEE Fellow, member of the National Academy of Engineering, authored numerous papers, held many patents, and served on advisory panels for the DoD, DARPA, Army, and National Academies. Sincoskie passed away at age 55 on October 20, 2010, survived by his wife JoAnn.
References:
- W. David Sincoskie - Wikipedia
- In Memoriam: Walter David Sincoskie - University of Delaware
- Dr. Walter David (Dave) Sincoskie - IT History Society
- Virtual LAN - Wikipedia
- W. DAVID SINCOSKIE - National Academy of Engineering Memorial Tribute