2006 Internet Award

Dr. Scott J. Shenker has been a primary force in Internet research over the past decade. Professor in the department of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California, and vice president and head of networking at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI), both in Berkeley, he helped found ICSI’s Center for Internet Research.

His first work on resource sharing showed that fair queuing routers would increase the stability and robustness of the Internet. This and his later work on congestion control led to a deeper understanding of network traffic dynamics.

He was also active in the community of researchers that defined extensions of the Internet architecture to support real-time services. This involved work on packet-scheduling, measurement-based admission control, and reservation protocols.

Shenker was among the first to use game theory to analyze resource sharing on the Internet, investigating how the Internet could reach a socially optimal outcome even when individual users adjusted their transmission rates in a selfish manner. He also has worked on pricing in computer networks, looking at both the architectural and economic issues involved.