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Pioneer

David L. Mills

Also Known As D.L. Mills · D. Mills
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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
Birth Year
1938 1
Birth Date
1938-06-03 1
Death Year
2024 1
Death Date
2024-01-17 1
Award
ACM Fellow 1
Award
IEEE Internet Award 1
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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Nationality

Also in Geography Atlas: the nationality of this subject.

Sources
1. Wikidata: David L. Mills
  • Wikidata Q3018243, class allow-list match (w-wdresolver-0926)
  • Wikidata Q3018243 P569 (date of birth)
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David L. Mills (Wikipedia)
In Field: Computer Networking, Lead paragraphView the Source
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