Mike Muuss

Mike Muuss
Mike Muuss in 1999.
Born	Michael John Muuss October 16, 1958(1958-10-16) Iowa City, Iowa
Died	November 20, 2000(2000-11-20) (aged 42) Maryland
Spouse	Susan Pohl

Mike Muuss (left) at the Ballistic Research Laboratory, using BRL-CAD to develop an M1 prototype, with Earl Weaver (right).

Michael John Muuss (October 16, 1958 - November 20, 2000) was the author of the freeware network tool Ping.

A graduate of Johns Hopkins University, Muuss was a senior scientist specializing in geometric solid modeling, ray-tracing, MIMD architectures and digital computer networks at the United States Army Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland when he died. He wrote a number of software packages (including BRL-CAD) and network tools (including ttcp and the concept of the default route or "default gateway") and contributed to many others (including BIND).^[1]

However, the thousand-line ping, which he wrote in December 1983 while working at the Ballistic Research Laboratory, is the program for which he is most remembered. Due to its usefulness, ping has been implemented on a large number of operating systems, initially BSD Unix, but later others including Windows and Mac OS X.

In 1993, the USENIX Association gave a Lifetime Achievement Award (Flame) to the Computer Systems Research Group at University of California, Berkeley, honoring 180 individuals, including Muuss, who contributed to the CSRG's 4.4BSD-Lite release.

Muuss is mentioned in two books, The Cuckoo's Egg (ISBN 0-7434-1146-3) and Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier (ISBN 0-684-81862-0), for his role in tracking down crackers. He also is mentioned in Peter Salus's A Quarter Century of UNIX.

Muuss died in an automobile collision on Interstate 95 on November 20, 2000.^[2] The Michael J. Muuss Research Award, set up by friends and family of Muuss, memorializes him at Johns Hopkins University.^[3]

References

1. ^ Internet Systems Consortium. "History of BIND software development". https://www.isc.org/software/bind/history. Retrieved 21 August 2009. 
2. ^ "Michael John Muuss, 42, computer expert whose software had key role in Internet", Baltimore Sun, November 25, 2000.
3. ^ Johns Hopkins University. "Awards" (PDF). http://www.jhu.edu/~admis/catalog/misc/scholarships_awards_prizes.pdf. 

External links

• Mike Muuss's home page
• Mike Muuss's Internet-related page
• BRL-CAD
• The Ping Fallacy

Persondata
Name	Muuss, Mike
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	October 16, 1958
Place of birth
Date of death	November 20, 2000
Place of death