Thomas E. Anderson

His NOW project showed how to build distributed supercomputers using only commodity systems and networks; that architecture, as commercialized by Inktomi, is the basis of modern internet data center computing. Co-founded PlanetLab, revolutionizing experimental network systems research by building a wide-area distributed computing platform. Seminal contributions to planetary-scale services and network protocol design: showed that internet routing is often pathological and that overlay routing can address the problem (Detour routing); produced maps of internet topology widely used in the evaluation of new protocols (Rocketfuel, iPlane); created scalable, resilient and secure peer-to-peer systems (BitTyrant, OneSwarm); developed tools for identifying and diagnosing route anomalies (BGP misconfigurations, Reverse Traceroute); developed novel network protocols using insights drawn from distributed systems (Consensus routing).