(This story originally appeared on the website of The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory)
Ashutosh Dutta, an engineer and computer scientist specializing in mobile networks and security, has been inducted into the New Internet Protocol version 6 Hall of Fame, the IPv6 Forum announced in December. Dutta was recognized for his leadership in the worldwide deployment of the next-generation protocol needed to support the global growth of the internet and improve its operation and security.
Dutta is chief 5G strategist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, and also serves as director of the Doctor of Engineering program at the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering and associate research professor at the Johns Hopkins Institute of Assured Autonomy.
The IPv6 Forum’s Hall of Fame recognizes the “experts and evangelists who have made extraordinary contributions” to the new protocol’s design and deployment. First deployed in 1996, version 6 provides the address infrastructure for connecting billions more devices and mobile phones, and offers improvements over IPv4, including auto-configuration, mobility, security and automation.
Over the past two decades, Dutta has been one of IPv6’s most prolific proponents, most notably in leadership roles in two professional societies — IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional organization for engineers, and the Association for Computing Machinery, the world’s largest computing society. As an IEEE Fellow and founding co-chair of IEEE Future Networks and the IEEE Connecting the Unconnected initiative, he has significantly grown global professional networks and promoted knowledge sharing to advance mobile wireless networks and expand internet access.
Through IEEE, Dutta has organized 5G summits in over 90 locations as well as seven 5G World Forums since 2018. He has built experimental testbeds in collaboration with global companies to demonstrate the feasibility of mobile communications protocols over IPv6 networks. He also architected and co-created an IEEE 5G/6G Innovation Testbed project that enables collaboration among service providers, vendors and researchers.
Dutta’s contributions are also expanding global access to the internet. Under his committee’s leadership on the IEEE Connecting the Unconnected initiative, the association is working to extend internet access to nearly 3 billion people worldwide in locations lacking connectivity.
Past IPv6 Hall of Fame inductees include Vint Cerf, creator of the internet’s architecture and Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol; Jun Murai, the “father of the internet in Japan”; Doug Montgomery, leader of the U.S. government’s v6 program at the National Institute of Standards and Technology; and Yanick Pouffary, distinguished chief technologist at Hewlett-Packard Co.
Dutta has worked closely with many fellow Hall of Famers, including his Ph.D. adviser Henning Schulzrinne, Levi Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University and former chief technology officer of the Federal Communications Commission, and Cerf, who is a collaborator on the IEEE Connecting the Unconnected initiative.
IPv6 is now in use across nearly half of the global internet and growing.
“It is a tremendous honor for me to be invited to join this elite group of visionaries,” Dutta said. “I am encouraged to continue my work toward IPv6 adoption and deployment for the benefit of humanity.”
Dutta joined APL in 2018 and has worked on a range of government-sponsored and internally funded research and development projects.