Dr. John C. Klensin is a computer science professional who is active in Internet-related issues.

His career includes 30 years as a Principal Research Scientist at MIT, a stint as INFOODS Project Coordinator for the United Nations University

United Nations University

The United Nations University is an academic arm of the United Nations established in 1973, which serves purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations. The UNU undertakes research into the pressing global problems of human survival, development and welfare that are the concern of...

, Distinguished Engineering Fellow at MCI WorldCom, and Internet Architecture Vice President at AT&T

AT&T

AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...

; he is now an independent consultant.

His involvement with Internet protocols began in 1969, when he worked on the File Transfer Protocol

File Transfer Protocol

File Transfer Protocol is a standard network protocol used to transfer files from one host to another host over a TCP-based network, such as the Internet. FTP is built on a client-server architecture and utilizes separate control and data connections between the client and server...

. In 1992 Randy Bush and John Klensin created the Network Startup Resource Center, helping dozens of countries to establish connections with FidoNet

FidoNet

FidoNet is a worldwide computer network that is used for communication between bulletin board systems. It was most popular in the early to mid 1990s, prior to the introduction of easy and affordable access to the Internet...

, UseNet

Usenet

Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...

, and when possible Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

.

In 2003 he received an INCITS Merit Award.
In 2008, he was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery

Association for Computing Machinery

The Association for Computing Machinery is a learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership is more than 92,000 as of 2009...

.

IETF work

John Klensin is the author or co-editor of over 40 RFCs, and has served as IETF Applications Area director 1993-1995, Internet Architecture Board

Internet Architecture Board

The Internet Architecture Board is the committee charged with oversight of the technical and engineering development of the Internet by the Internet Society ....

 member 1996-2002, and IAB chair 2000-2002. In March 2009 he began another term on the IAB ending in 2011.

The RFCs written or edited by John Klensin cover SMTP

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is an Internet standard for electronic mail transmission across Internet Protocol networks. SMTP was first defined by RFC 821 , and last updated by RFC 5321 which includes the extended SMTP additions, and is the protocol in widespread use today...

 (RFC 4409 and RFC 5321 among others), IDNA

Internationalized domain name

An internationalized domain name is an Internet domain name that contains at least one label that is displayed in software applications, in whole or in part, in a language-specific script or alphabet, such as Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Hindi or the Latin alphabet-based characters with diacritics,...

 (RFC 5890 and RFC 6055 among others), Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...

 (RFC 5137 and RFC 5198 among others), and other fields such as CRAM-MD5

CRAM-MD5

In cryptography, CRAM-MD5 is achallenge-response authentication mechanism defined in RFC 2195 based on theHMAC-MD5 MACalgorithm...

 (RFC 2195) or IETF policies (RFC 3933). In March 2011 8BITMIME (RFC 6152) was published as Internet standard

Internet standard

In computer network engineering, an Internet Standard is a normative specification of a technology or methodology applicable to the Internet. Internet Standards are created and published by the Internet Engineering Task Force .-Overview:...

 STD 71, in November 2011 Mail submission

Mail submission agent

A mail submission agent is a computer program or software agent that receives electronic mail messages from a mail user agent and cooperates with a mail transfer agent for delivery of the mail...

 (RFC 6409) was published as STD 72.

His i18n

Internationalization and localization

In computing, internationalization and localization are means of adapting computer software to different languages, regional differences and technical requirements of a target market...

 work also included an April Fools' Day RFC

April Fools' Day RFC

Almost every April Fools' Day since 1989, the Internet Engineering Task Force has published one or more humorous RFC documents, following in the path blazed by the June 1973 RFC 527 entitled ARPAWOCKY, which parodied Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem Jabberwocky...

 in collaboration with Harald Alvestrand

Harald Tveit Alvestrand

Harald Tveit Alvestrand is a Norwegian computer scientist. He was the chairman of the Internet Engineering Task Force from 2001 until 2005...

 (RFC 5242) and MIME

MIME

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions is an Internet standard that extends the format of email to support:* Text in character sets other than ASCII* Non-text attachments* Message bodies with multiple parts...

 in collaboration with Ned Freed

Ned Freed

Ned Freed has contributed as an IETF participant and RFC writer to a significant number of internet protocol standards.-Life:Edwin Earl "Ned" Freed was born in 1959 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He graduated from Groton School in 1978...

 (RFC 4289 among others). He is working on several Internet drafts. As of 2011 he is one of the two co-chairs for the IETF EAI working group, and a member of the RFC

Request for Comments

In computer network engineering, a Request for Comments is a memorandum published by the Internet Engineering Task Force describing methods, behaviors, research, or innovations applicable to the working of the Internet and Internet-connected systems.Through the Internet Society, engineers and...

Independent Submissions Editorial Board.