David Lennox Mills (June 3, 1938 to January 17, 2024) was an American computer engineer and professor emeritus at the University of Delaware. An Internet pioneer who led the Gateway Algorithms and Data Structures Task Force, he was known as the internet's Father Time for designing the Network Time Protocol, which synchronizes participating computers across different computer systems and networks to within a few milliseconds of Coordinated Universal Time.
Facts
FAQs
How did the Network Time Protocol begin and how much did its accuracy improve?
NTP version 0 dates from 1985 and its accuracy improved from hundreds of milliseconds to tens of nanoseconds.
David Mills traced the protocol's origins to the early Internet. In his own history of the protocol, he reports that what later became known as NTP version 0 was implemented in 1985, both in the Fuzzball testbed operating system by Mills and in Unix by Louis Mamakos and Michael Petry at the University of Maryland. Over two decades of continuous operation the technology improved from hundreds of milliseconds in the early 1980s to tens of nanoseconds in the new century.
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Source David L. Mills (Wikipedia)
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Sources
1. Wikidata: David L. Mills
- Wikidata Q3018243, class allow-list match (w-wdresolver-0926)
- Wikidata Q3018243 P569 (date of birth)
View the SourceDavid L. Mills (Wikipedia)
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