Dave Farber has passed away. He was one of the most important people in the creation of the Internet and a friend of High Tech Forum. He taught the people who did most of the work on making the network he once described as a “research project” into the backbone of modern communication.

He also played a major role in creating the local area networks that made something like TCP/IP necessary; the Irvine Ring he created was one of the canonical designs that every LAN architect studied.

Dave was truly amazing at nurturing talent. When we decided to try doing a podcast, he was our very first guest. Here’s a story that illustrates what a great guy he was.

I recorded a two hour conversation with Dave that I intended to split into to two episodes. Getting all the audio stuff to work was a bit of a hassle, but I thought I had it down.

We talked and talked, covering his life story and highlighting his contributions. But when I went to edit and upload the conversation the next day I discovered that I hadn’t actually recorded anything. There was some button I didn’t press because I was new at podcasting.

I completely freaked out. When I told Dave what had happened he just said: “Don’t worry about it, we’ll just do it again.” And we did. You can listen to it here.

Dave’s obituary in the New York Times links to the podcast. I’m sure he would like that.

They don’t make people like Dave Farber any more.