MichNet News
March 1996
Merit Assumes Leadership of GateD Consortium
by Susan R. Harris, Merit
Merit Network, a longtime pioneer in Internet research and development, has assumed leadership of the GateD software consortium. A highly successful partnership between industry and academia, the Consortium furthers the development of the GateD routing software, which is used to connect networks worldwide.
GateD (for Gateway Daemon, pronounced "gate-dee") was originally developed at Cornell University. Cornell selected Merit to take over the Consortium based on Merit's staff, experience and resourcesÐexpertise that will build and expand GateD's role as a pivotal technology in today's Internet.
Eric Aupperle, President of Merit, comments, "We're very pleased to be able to make this contribution to the Internet community as a follow- on to Cornell's activities. Our experience in state and national networking gives us a breadth of knowledge that few other organizations can offer to the Consortium."
Martyne Hallgren, who served as Executive Director of the Consortium at Cornell, says that "we are very excited about the new directions Merit is taking for GateD. Merit's unique position in internetworking gives it the momentum to guide GateD well into the next generation of the Internet."
The GateD modular routing software is used worldwide to interconnect packet-switched networks. GateD was the core routing software for the NSFNET backbone, and is a de facto reference implementation for emerging Internet routing technologies, including provision of routing support for ATM backbone networks. GateD is used on the next-generation vBNS (very high speed Backbone Network Services) funded by the National Science Foundation, and is licensed and distributed on workstations manufactured by Sun, HP, IBM, DEC, and other corporations that provide leading-edge networking technologies.
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Because GateD runs on most major Unix platforms, it offers an affordable routing solution for thousands of companies and educational institutions around the world. GateD supports multiple IP network routing protocols, and is a platform for prototyping and for broad distribution of new protocols and features, such as policy-based route filtering.
Susan Hares, technical director of the Consortium, says that Merit's future plans for GateD focus on stability and commercial grade quality for the software. Hares plans to provide many special benefits to Consortium members, including new test tools and early access to new code. "Having the source code here at Merit makes it faster and easier for us to add new features than vendors with proprietary solutions," she says.
Membership in the GateD Consortium is open to any organization in any country. Members have access to the latest software and documentation, receive in-depth briefings on new capabilities, and have opportunities to work closely with the developers. For membership information, including benefits and fee structure, see the GateD Web home page.