History of the TCCC

The IEEE CS TCCC was founded in the mid-1970s upon the upcoming of LANs and communications between computer systems. Ethernet and related approaches have seen broad support in terms of standards work from the TCCC. Records of early TCCC activity between 1978 and 1983 have yet to be located. However, an interview with Dr. Harvey Freeman yielded some insights which are repeated here.

TCCC Chairs during this timeframe include:

  • Dr. Ken Thurber, TCCC Chair from 1978 through 1979
  • Dr. Harvey Freeman, TCCC Chair from 1980 through 1981
  • Dr. Rob Rosenthal, TCCC Chair from 1982 through 1983

The time period during Dr. Freeman’s tenure as TCCC Chair proved to be an exciting time in local area network (LAN) definition, standardization, and deployment. It was during these years that Marius Graube started the IEEE 802 committee. Dr. Freeman was approached to host these early 802 committee meetings as a TCCC subcommittee. He recalls the different industry sponsors pushing the 802 committee to standardize Ethernet over IBM’s Token Ring technology. Ethernet was developed at Xerox PARC between 1973 and 1974. In 1979 3Com was formed by Bob Metcalfe who convinced Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), Intel, and Xerox to work together to promote Ethernet as a standard. Token Ring was a LAN technology mostly used by IBM. Ethernet was standardized as 802.3 in 1982; Token Ring was standardized as 802.5 in 1985.

As part of the LAN revolution, Dr. Freeman was approached to start a conference with a specific focus on LAN technology. IEEE InfoCom was started in 1982 in response to this request. It was a joint conference sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society (CS) and the IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc) until 2002 when it became solely sponsored by ComSoc.

TCCC’s major flagship conference was, since the early days, the LCN conference (IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks), which was run in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A. until its 22nd appearance in 1997. The first LCN conference was held on September 16-17, 1976 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sponsored by the University of Minnesota (UMN), University Computer Center with the cooperation of Network Systems, Inc. The two primary organizing committee members included Dr. Peter C. Patton and Dr. Abe Franck, UMN Computer Center. At this first running the conference was entitled the “Conference on Experiments in New Approaches to Local Computer Networking”. The second running was October 13-14, 1977 when the name changed to the “Conference on ‘A Second Look at Local Computer Networking’”. The third running was October 23-24, 1978 when the conference name changed again to the “Third Conference on Local Computer Networks”. Since then the conference was simply called LCN. From the fourth LCN (1979) on, the conference was sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society TCCC.

TCCC became inactive in 1984 until 2001. In 2001, Joe Bumblis was elected as the first TCCC Chair since TCCC’s period of inactivity. The members of the TCCC executive committees since then are provided as follows.

Executive committee members from 2001-2005

Chair: Joe Bumblis, United Defense (UDLP)
Vice-Chair: Sajal K. Das, University of Texas at Arlington
Finance Chair (Acting): Joe Bumblis, United Defense (UDLP)
Security Technology Chair: Gary Kessler, Champlain College
Un-tethered Network Technology Chair: Archan Misra, UT at Arlington
Strategic Planning Chair: Ellis Nolley, Strategic Growth
Members-at-Large:

  • Douglas Comer, Purdue University
  • Sanjay Jha, University of New South Wales
  • Charles Perkins, Nokia Research
  • Howard Salwen, Audeon Networks
  • Clint Jurgens, IOSolutions
    Web Master: Gary Kessler, Champlain College

Executive committee members from 2006-2007

Chair: Archan Misra, IBM Research
Untethered Network Technologies Chair: Sunghyun Choi, Seoul National University
Radio and Convergence Technologies Chair: Sanjeev Rai, ARE
Multimedia Technology Chair: Jörg Ott, Helsinki University of Technology
Finance Chair: Frank Hübner, AT&T
Security Technology Chair: TBA
Webmaster: Iqbal Mohomed, University of Toronto
Member-at-Large: Uday Desai, IIT Bombay
Ex-chair: Joe Bumblis, BAE Systems
Ex-Vice Chair: Sajal Das, UT Arlington

Executive committee members from 2007-2013

TCCC Chair: Burkhard Stiller, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Wireless/Mobility Chair: Matthias Frank
Systems Chair: Joe Bumblis, University of Wisconsin-Stout, U.S.A.
Peer-to-peer Chair: David Hausheer, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany
Security Chair: Katrin Höper, Motorola, U.S.A.
Network Monitoring/Measurements/Accounting Chair: Anura Jayasumana, Colorado State University, U.S.A.
Smart Grid Chair: Archan Misra, Singapore Management University, Singapore
Finance Chair: Frank Hübner, AT&T, U.S.A.
Multimedia Technology Chair: Jörg Ott, Helsinki University of Technology, Finland (till 2012)

Executive committee members from 2013-2018

TCCC Chair: Nils Aschenbruck, University of Osnabrück, Germany
TCCC Past Chair: Burkhard Stiller, University of Zürich, Switzerland
Treasurer: Frank Huebner, IEEE Computer Society Volunteer, U.S.A.
History Chair: Joe Bumblis, IEEE TCCC Executive Committee, U.S.A.
Industry Chair: Katrin Reitsma, Motorola Solutions, U.S.A.
Communications Chair: Matthias Frank, University of Bonn, Germany
Hot Topic Area Chair for “SDN & NFV”: David Hausheer, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany
Hot Topic Area Chair for “Internet of Things”: Salil Kanhere, University of New South Wales, Australia
Hot Topic Area Chair for “Socio-economics of Networking”: Burkhard Stiller, University of Zürich, Switzerland
TCHPC Representative: Anura Jayasumana, Colorado State University, U.S.A.

Executive committee members from 2018-2021

TCCC Chair: Andreas Reinhardt, TU Clausthal, Germany
TCCC Past Chair: Nils Aschenbruck, University of Osnabrück, Germany
Treasurer: Frank Huebner, U.S.A.
Student Outreach Chair: Matthias Wübbeling, University of Bonn and Fraunhofer FKIE, Germany
Industry Chair: Girish Revadigar, Huawei International Pte. Ltd., Singapore
History Chair: Joe Bumblis, IEEE TCCC Executive Committee, U.S.A.
Communications Chair: Matthias Frank, University of Bonn, Germany
TCHPC Representative: Anura Jayasumana, Colorado State University, U.S.A.
Conference Liaison Chairs:

  • Salil Kanhere, The University of New South Wales, Australia
  • Burkhard Stiller, University of Zürich, Switzerland