Paul Vixie
Paul Vixie (born May 23, 1963) is an American computer scientist whose technical contributions include Domain Name System (DNS) protocol design and procedure, mechanisms to achieve operational robustness of DNS implementations, and significant contributions to open source software principles and methodology. He also created and launched the first successful commercial anti-spam service. He authored the standard UNIX system programs SENDS, proxynet, rtty and Vixie cron.
Also recorded as P. Vixie
Paul Vixie

ImaginingtheInternet · YouTube: Internet Hall of Fame 2014: Paul Vixie – View/save archived versions on archive.org · CC BY 3.0
- Born
- 1963.
- Nationality
- United States.
- Occupation
- computer scientist, engineer and writer.
- Fields
- American Registry for Internet Numbers, Request for Comments and Internet protocol suite.
- Education
- George Washington High School.
- Known for
- cron.
- Honours
- Internet Hall of Fame and O'Reilly Open Source Award.
- Languages
- English.
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
VALÉORINE documentary reading
Documentary summary
Paul Vixie (born May 23, 1963) is an American computer scientist whose technical contributions include Domain Name System (DNS) protocol design and procedure, mechanisms to achieve operational robustness of DNS implementations, and significant contributions to open source software principles and methodology. He also created and launched the first successful commercial anti-spam service. He authored the standard UNIX system programs SENDS, proxynet, rtty and Vixie cron.
Admitted source layer · organised and presented by VALÉORINE
Note VALÉORINE
No house-authored Note is published until its assertions and sources pass the VALÉORINE evidence contract. The documentary article remains available in full while that enrichment is being consolidated.
Documentary enrichment in progress · no unsupported statement published
Reference Check
Propose documentary evidence for Paul Vixie. A contribution is never written directly as fact: identity, source, rights and evidence gates still decide.
Sign in to contribute
World of VALÉORINE
Documentary connections
Only confirmed graph relationships appear here. Images are shown only when their identity and reuse rights both pass the documentary gate.
Documentary evidence
Evidence Panel
wikipedia incomplete · checked 25 September 2026
- Identity
- resolved
- Independent source families
- 0
- Admitted assertions
- 0
- Open conflicts
- 0
Authority files
wikidata · Q92777 · wikipedia · Paul Vixie
In this article
Early life
Early life
At one point he ran his own consulting business, Vixie Enterprises. In 2002, Vixie held the record for "most CERT advisories due to a single author".
Paul Vixie studied at George Washington High School. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is American Registry for Internet Numbers, Request for Comments and Internet protocol suite. Employment is recorded with Digital Equipment Corporation. Works named in the authority record are cron. Distinctions recorded are Internet Hall of Fame and O'Reilly Open Source Award.
Paul A Vixie was born on May 23, 1963 and grew up in San Francisco, and his mother's maiden name is Killian. "There were no computers at my school. I used to cut school and go to City College of San Francisco, where they had a Honeywell system" — Paul Vixie In 1980, when George Washington High School in San Francisco told him he'd have to repeat 11th grade, he quit school and got a job as a programmer at a consulting firm.
Career
Career
Vixie worked on BIND as a software engineer at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from 1988 to 1993. After he left DEC in 1994, he founded Internet Software Consortium (ISC) in 1996 together with Rick Adams and Carl Malamud to support BIND and other software for the Internet. The activities of ISC were assumed by a new company, Internet Systems Consortium in 2004. Although ISC operates the F root name server, Vixie at one point joined the Open Root Server Network (ORSN) project and operated their L root server. Vixie played an instrumental role in making the complete works of Shakespeare available online for the very first time. His 1992 transcriptions for The Complete Moby Shakespeare formed the basis for the "two oldest and most complete" Shakespeare sites on the Internet, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Complete Works and the University of Virginia's Shakespeare Resources. In 1995 he cofounded the Palo Alto Internet Exchange (PAIX) and, after Metromedia Fiber Network (MFN) bought it in 1999, served as the chief technology officer to MFN / AboveNet and later as the president of PAIX. In 1998 he cofounded Mail Abuse Prevention System (MAPS), a California non-profit company with the goal of stopping email abuse. Vixie is the author of several Request for Comments (RFC)s, including a Best Current Practice document on "Classless IN-ADDR.ARPA Delegation" (BCP 20), and some Unix software. He stated in 2002 that he "now hold[s] the record for 'most CERT advisories due to a single author.'" In 2008, Vixie served as a judge for the Mozilla Foundation's "Download Day", an attempt to set a Guinness World Record for most downloads in a single day for a new piece of software. Vixie served on the board of trustees of the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) from 2005 to 2013, and served as chairman in 2009 and 2010. Vixie also serves on the Security and Stability Advisory Committee of ICANN. He received a Ph.D. in computer science from Keio University in 2011. In 2013, after nearly 20 years at ISC, he founded a new company, Farsight Security, Inc. spinning off the Security Business Unit from ISC. In 2014, Vixie was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame as an Innovator. In 2021, Vixie's company FarSight Security was acquired by DomainTools. Since 2022, he has been working at AWS. On May 1, 2026 he left AWS.
Realizations
Realizations
BIND Vixie cron DHCP sendmail
Works
Works
Paul Vixie. Software Engineering an essay in: Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution ISBN 1-56592-582-3 Vixie, Paul; Avolio, Frederick M. (1995). Sendmail: Theory and Practice. Maynard, Mass: Digital Press. ISBN 978-1-55558-127-5.
Patents
Patents
US 6581090, Lindbo, Sverker; Löthberg, Peter & Vixie, Paul, "Procedure and apparatus for information transmission on the Internet", issued October 14, 1996
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 1 entries
1963
Paul Vixie born.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Paul Vixie's LinkedIn page.
- 2.Paul A Vixie, Born 05/23/1963 in California CaliforniaBirthIndex.org. www.californiabirthindex.org.
- 3.Filkins, Dexter. Was There a Connection Between a Russian Bank and the Trump Campaign? A team of computer scientists sifted through records of unusual Web traffic in search of answers. NewYorker.com. 8 October 2018.
- 4.Reid, Brian ISC founder Paul Vixie inducted into the 2014 Internet Hall of Fame , ISC, April 9, 2014 (accessed March 25 2017)
- 5.Paul Vixie : Security vulnerabilities, CVEs. www.cvedetails.com.
- 6.FREEWARE PIONEERS / Vixie's Bind Made Names for Web. SFGATE.
- 7.40 years on, the Internet transmits every aspect of our lives. San Francisco Chronicle.
- 8.The Future of the Internet and Privacy. www.bankinfosecurity.com.
- 9.A Brief History of the DNS and BIND — BIND 9 documentation.
- 10.Internet History.
- 11.Westfall, Suzanne. 'Go sound the ocean, and cast your nets': Surfing the Net for Early Modern Theatre. Early Theatre. 5. 2. 87–132. 2002. 1206-9078.
- 12.Executive Profile: Paul Vixie , Bloomberg (accessed 25 March 2017).
- 13.Vixie, Paul. Re: Malformed SNMP Packet log/trace. North American Network Operations Group mailing list. 2002-02-26.
- 14.Graff, Mark G. Secure Coding: Principles and Practices. O'Reilly. "Advance Praise" section. 2003. 978-0-596-00242-8.
- 15.Paul Vixie listed as a judge on the Firefox 3 2008 Download Day.
- 16.Former Members of the Board of Trustees.
- 17.SSAC Membership.
- 18.Paul Vixie - Internet Hall of Fame.
- 19.Internet Systems Consortium. ISC Spins Off Its Security Business Unit. 2 July 2013.
- 20.ISOC. Internet Hall of Fame Announces 2014 Inductees. 8 April 2014.
- 21.DNSFilter. DNS Encryption Webinar: Paul Vixie (Farsight Security) and Peter Lowe (DNSFilter) on DNS-over-HTTPS. 2021-11-18.
- 22.Defining the Role of Distinguished Engineers AWS Executive Insights. Amazon Web Services, Inc.
- 23.LinkedIn.
- 24.Internet Software Consortium. ISC DHCP.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
reference work
Partially resolvedreference work
Wikidata, structured authority record Q92777: Paul VixieWikimedia Foundation
Partially resolved
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Books
38,661 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- Paul VerlaineAuthor
- Paul VermeerschAuthor
- Paul VialarAuthor
- Paul ViidingAuthor
- Paul von Lettow-VorbeckAuthor
- Paul W. S. AndersonAuthor
- Paul WatzlawickAuthor
- Paul WeilandAuthor
Best supported in this field
For owners
Own a work by Paul Vixie?
A specialist will read what you send and tell you what the house can establish, what it cannot, and whether the object is suited to sale. There is no charge and no obligation. The object stays with you throughout; nothing is shipped to us unless it is arranged in writing beforehand.