John Linn

Biography

John Linn is the Network Development Manager at the University of Aberdeen. He was educated at Edinburgh University and Manchester University, at which he then lectured for several years in Computing Science before moving to Aberdeen University Computing Centre, renamed DIT.

He participated in the evolution of JANET and campus networking: from proprietary protocols, e.g. Honeywell’s RNP, to X.25, Coloured Books (in particular, JNT (Grey Book) MAIL); to ethernet, FDDI, ATM, 100E/Gig and Internet Protocols. At the university he has been involved with campus network development, electronic mail, video conferencing (SMVCN), IT Disaster Recover Planning, network security review, and, last year, the replacement of the core network.

John has been the network developer of AbMAN from the beginning. The original MAN was ATM-based interfacing resiliently with Scot-X and JANET, moving to GIG and now, resiliently, with 2.5Gbit/s POS on recently purchased core routers. The basic IP service provision was followed by developments in IPv4 multicast and IPv6. As part of UK MMG, John has been the IPv6 ‘champion’ in conjunction with the JANET(UK) Joint Development Advisory Group.