Sally Jean Floyd was an American computer scientist born on May 20, 1950, and she passed away on August 25, 2019. She worked on how computers connect to share information, especially focusing on managing internet traffic to prevent slowdowns. She was employed by the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, California, and retired in 2009. In 2007, she was among the top ten most frequently cited researchers in computer science.
Biography
Floyd was born in Charlottesville, Virginia. She earned a B.A. in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1971. She later received an M.S. in computer science in 1987 and a Ph.D. in 1989, both from UC Berkeley. Her Ph.D. was completed with the guidance of Richard M. Karp.
Floyd is most recognized for her work in congestion control, where she created the Random Early Detection ("RED") active queue management scheme. This work helped start the field of Active Queue Management (AQM) alongside Van Jacobson. Most Internet routers use RED or similar methods to manage network traffic. Floyd also developed a common technique to add small delays to message timers, which helps prevent synchronization issues.
In 1997, Floyd worked with Vern Paxson to highlight that a lack of understanding about network structure was a major challenge in studying how the Internet functions. Their paper, titled "Why We Don't Know How to Simulate the Internet," was republished as "Difficulties in Simulating the Internet" in 2001. It received the IEEE Communications Society's William R. Bennett Prize Paper Award.
Floyd is also a co-author of several important standards, including the rules for TCP Selective Acknowledgment (SACK), Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN), the Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP), and TCP Friendly Rate Control (TFRC).
She was honored with the IEEE Internet Award in 2005 and the ACM SIGCOMM Award in 2007 for her work in congestion control. She was a member of the Internet Architecture Board and was among the top-ten most cited researchers in computer science in 2007.
Awards
- 2007 – Received the SIGCOMM Award from the ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communications. This award is considered the most important honor for a scientist working in computer networking.
- Awarded the IEEE Communications Society’s William R. Bennett Prize for Best Paper for the work titled "Difficulties in Simulating the Internet," written by Floyd and Vern Paxson.
Personal life and death
Floyd's father, Edwin, was a mathematician at the University of Virginia. Floyd was married to Carole Leita. Floyd passed away on August 25, 2019, in Berkeley, California, at the age of 69. He died from gallbladder cancer that had spread to other parts of his body.
Selected notable papers
- S. Floyd and V. Jacobson, "Random Early Detection Gateways for Congestion Avoidance," published in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking in 1993
- S. Floyd and K. Fall, "Promoting the Use of End-to-End Congestion Control in the Internet," published in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking in 1993
- V. Paxson and S. Floyd, "Wide Area Traffic: The Failure of Poisson Modeling," published in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking in 1995
- M. Mathis, J. Mahdavi, S. Floyd, and A. Romanow, "TCP Selective Acknowledgement Options," published as RFC 2018 in 1996
- S. Floyd and V. Paxson, "Why We Don't Know How to Simulate the Internet," presented at the 1997 Winter Simulation Conference. Later republished as "Difficulties in Simulating the Internet" in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, volume 9, number 4 (August 2001). Won the IEEE Communications Society William R. Bennett Prize Paper Award in 2001.