Mockapetris

Paul Mockapetris is an American computer scientist widely recognized as the designer of the Domain Name System (DNS). Working at the Information Sciences Institute of the University of Southern California, he collaborated with Jon Postel to develop a scalable naming system for the Internet.

In 1983 he authored the foundational DNS specifications, published as RFC 882 and RFC 883, which defined the distributed, hierarchical domain name space, the resource record data structures, and the query/response protocol used by name servers. This work replaced the centralized and brittle HOSTS.TXT approach and enabled the rapid expansion of the Internet by allowing administrators to delegate authority for portions of the namespace to local servers.

The DNS architecture and its core concepts—zone delegation, recursion, name servers, root, top-level domains, and various resource record types—have proven to be robust and enduring. Subsequent RFCs, including later updates and extensions, have refined and extended the DNS system while preserving its basic design.

Mockapetris's contributions established the DNS as a foundational technology for Internet naming and have influenced standards, implementation, and policy for decades. He remains associated with DNS research and related standards work, and his work is widely cited in discussions of Internet infrastructure and architecture.