Dave Täht

Täht co-founded the Bufferbloat Project with Jim Gettys, ran the CeroWrt and Make-Wifi-Fast sub-projects, and refereed the bufferbloat related mailing lists{{ cite web | url=https://lists.bufferbloat.net | title=Bufferbloat.net mailing lists}} and related research activities.

With a long running goal of one day building an internet with sufficiently low latency and jitter that "you could plug your piano into the wall and play with a drummer across town",{{cite web | last=Täht |first=Dave |date=June 2013| title=Towards imperceptible latency| publisher=Internet Society | url= https://www.internetsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/28_towards_imperceptible_latency.pdf}} he was a persistent and dedicated explainer of how queues across the internet (and wifi) really work, lecturing at MIT,{{cite web | title=What's wrong with WiFi | url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wksh2DPHCD | last=Winstein | first=Keith | publisher = MIT CSAIL }} Stanford,{{ cite web | title=Introduction to CoDel | url =https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mxoa5Si4Ubw | publisher = Stanford NetSeminar }} and other internet institutions such as APNIC.{{ cite web | last=McFillin | first= Adam | title= Bufferbloat might be solved but it's not over yet | date= 22 January 2020 | url= https://blog.apnic.net/2020/01/22/bufferbloat-may-be-solved-but-its-not-over-yet/ | publisher = APNIC }}

In the early stages of the Bufferbloat project he helped prove that applying advanced AQM and Fair Queuing techniques like (FQ-CoDel) to network packet flows would break essential assumptions in existing low priority congestion controls such as bittorrent and LEDBAT and further, that it did not matter.{{cite conference|url=https://perso.telecom-paristech.fr/drossi/paper/rossi14comnet-b.pdf|title=Fighting the bufferbloat: on the coexistence of AQM and low priority congestion control|date=June 2013|last1= Gong |last2= Rossi |last3= Testa |last4= Valenti |last5= Täht |book-title= Computer Networks|publication-date=2014|conference=INFOCOM 2013}}

His CeroWrt project{{cite web | url=https://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/cerowrt/wiki/ | title=The CeroWrt Project is complete }} showed that advanced algorithms like CoDel, FQ-CoDel, DOCSIS-PIE and Cake were effective at reducing network latency, at no cost in throughput{{cite web|url=https://www.cablelabs.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Active_Queue_Management_Algorithms_DOCSIS_3_0.pdf|title=Active Queue Management Algorithms for DOCSIS 3.0 | last=White | first=Greg}} not only at low bandwidths but scaled to 10s of GB/s and could be implemented on inexpensive hardware. CeroWrt project members also helped make OpenWrt ready for IPv6 Launch Day, and pushed all the innovations back into open source.

His successor Make-Wifi-Fast project solved{{cite conference |last=Høiland-Jørgensen|first=T.|display-authors=et al.|title=Ending the Anomaly: Achieving Low Latency and Airtime Fairness in WiFi|book-title=Proceedings of the 2017 USENIX Annual Technical Conference |conference=USENIX ATC '17 July 12–14, 2017, Santa Clara, CA, USA|pages=139–151 | publication-date=2017}} the WiFi performance anomaly by extending the FQ-Codel algorithm to work on multiple WiFi chips in Linux,{{cite web | first=Jonathan | last=Corbet | publisher = Linux Weekly News | url= https://lwn.net/Articles/705884/ | title=Making WiFi fast}} reducing latency under load by up to a factor of 50.

FQ-CoDel has since become the default network queuing algorithm for Ethernet and Wi-Fi in most Linux distributions, and on iOS, and macOS. It is also widely used in packet shapers. Comcast also successfully rolled out the DOCSIS-PIE AQM during the COVID crisis{{Cite arXiv | title = Improving Latency with Active Queue Management (AQM) During COVID-19 | first1 = Allen | last1= Flickinger | first2 = Carl | last2 = Klatsky | first3=Atahualpa | last3=Ledesma | first4=Jason | last4 = Livingood | first5 = Sebnem | last5 = Ozer | year = 2021 | class = cs.NI | eprint = 2107.13968 }} Comcast Research. with observed 8-16x reductions in network latency under load across the millions of user devices tested.

In order to complete the make-wifi-fast project, by co-authoring an FCC filing{{ cite web | url=https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/60001328652.pdf | first1=Dave | last1=Taht | first2 = Vint | last2=Cerf | title = Saner Software Practices }} and co-ordinating a worldwide protest with Vint Cerf, and many other early Internet pioneers, Taht successfully fought proposed FCC rules{{ cite web | url=https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-15-92A1.pdf | title=Amendment of Parts 0, 1, 2, 15 and 18 of the Commission's Rules regarding Authorization of Radiofrequency Equipment }} to prohibit the installation of 3rd party firmware on home routers.{{cite web |last=Storm |first=Darlene |title=Vint Cerf and 260 experts give FCC a plan to secure wifi routers |date=14 October 2015 | url=https://www.computerworld.com/article/2993112/vint-cerf-and-260-experts-give-fcc-a-plan-to-secure-wi-fi-routers.html}}{{ Cite news | last = Hruska | first = Joel | url = https://www.extremetech.com/computing/216361-vint-cerf-hundreds-of-researchers-call-on-fcc-to-mandate-open-source-router-firmware | title = Hundreds of researchers call on the fcc to mandate open source router firmware | newspaper = Extremetech | date = 15 October 2015 }}

He had been intensely critical of the academic network research community, extolling open access, open source code and the value of negative and repeatable results.{{cite web |last=Taht |first=Dave |title=The value of repeatable experiments and negative results | url= http://conferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/2014/doc/slides/137.pdf | publisher=SIGCOMM 2014}}

As one of the instigators of the IETF AQM and Packet Scheduling working group,{{cite web | title=IETF Active Queue Management and Packet Scheduling Working Group | url= https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/aqm/documents/}} he is the co-author of RFC8290,

{{cite IETF |title=The Flow Queue CoDel Packet Scheduler and AQM algorithm |rfc=8290 |last=Hoeiland-Joergensen |first=Toke |date=January 2018 |publisher=IETF }} and a contributor to RFC8289{{cite IETF |title = Controlled Delay Active Queue Management|rfc = 8289 |last1 = Nichols|first1 = K. |author-link1 = Kathleen Nichols |last2 = Jacobson |first2 = V. |author-link2 = Van Jacobson |last3 = McGregor |first3 = A. |last4 = Iyengar |first4 = J. |date = Jan 2018 |publisher = IETF}} (CODEL), RFC7567,{{cite ietf | rfc=7567 }} RFC8034,{{cite ietf | rfc=8034}} RFC7928,{{cite ietf | rfc=7928}} RFC7806,{{cite ietf | rfc=7806}} and RFC8033.{{cite ietf | rfc=8033}} He also made contributions to the DOCSIS 3.1 standard.

He was a filksinger, often performing songs like "It GPLs me",{{ cite web | url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxLbNCB-YKI | title=It Gpl's me | website=YouTube }} and "One First Landing" at various computer and science fiction conventions.

He served on the Commons Conservancy{{cite web | url=https://commonsconservancy.org/organisation/ |title=The guts of The Commons Conservancy }} board of directors.

News of his April 1, 2025, death was shared in a post by the LibreQoS project.{{cite web |title=In loving memory of Dave Täht |url=https://libreqos.io/2025/04/01/in-loving-memory-of-dave/ |website=LibreQoS |access-date=2 April 2025}}[https://thenewstack.io/dave-taht-who-sped-up-networks-more-than-youll-ever-know-has-died/ Dave Taht, Who Sped Up Networks More Than You’ll Ever Know, Has Died]

{{Reflist}}

• [http://blog.cerowrt.org CeroWrt Notebook] (Täht's congestion control blog)
• [https://www.bufferbloat.net/ bufferbloat.net] Master Bufferbloat Project Site
• {{LinkedIn URL|https://www.linkedin.com/in/dtaht}}

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