Perlman has received many honors in her field. Since then, her status as the “Mother of the Internet” has been solidified through her contributions to public key infrastructure, data expiration, and distributed algorithms. TRILL, a successor of STP, allows Ethernet to make more optimal use of bandwidth. In 2004, Perlman introduced TRILL (TRansparent Interconnection of Lots of Links). Perlman, a lover of literature and art, (in)famously wrote a poem for her boss describing the functions of STP. The result of her efforts was the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) which transformed Ethernet technology by preventing network loops and redundancy in order to improve fault tolerance. Without it, network loops would cause slow, irregular internet connection or network failure. Her work centered on the creation of a distributed algorithm that could allow networks to self-organize in a scalable and robust way. Perlman’s career began in the 1980s at DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) when network infrastructure and security were just getting started. She attributes her success to the fact that she doesn’t fit the “tinkering engineer” stereotype- instead, she focuses on simplifying the complicated and letting the machines do the work themselves. It’s this exact attitude that helped her cultivate her personal philosophy: that people shouldn’t have to understand technology in order to use it. Rather than a first-adopter of new gadgets, she’d consider herself a last-adopter, someone left kicking and screaming when given a new interface. Radia Perlman wasn’t always a fan of technology.
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