I didn't know him, but followed his work on bufferbloat closely. I've never seen anyone work so diligently, for so many years, to fix a problem most people will never know even existed. And yet, that work will be felt by almost everyone on the internet. I'm sad knowing he's passed, and thankful to have seen his work. Rest in peace.
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bzg
In 2012, he travelled to France and bought me a beer to thank me for my work on Org-Mode, and it was great. He was enthusiastic about this worldwide half-random connections, and insisted on how great it was to be able to connect with everyone in this way... we certainly miss him and that spirit.
Learning about Bufferbloat in my undergrad, but more importantly that by running OpenWrt on my €20 home router and simply activating an (at the time) nonstandard queueing policy could make a shared internet connection infinitely more usable, blew my mind.
I never met him, but from what I saw on the relevant mailing lists, Dave was at the center of it all. Rest in peace.
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zitterbewegung
Sorry to hear this. I was at Goto Chicago for one of his talks and he used a bunch of people to model TCP and participated and learned a lot about the protocol. Really nice person and great lecturer.
He also noted that GL INET devices have the LibreQos pre installed and recommended those routers.
zoobab
Dave had a rtalk about Starlink at Wireless Battlemesh in Paris in 2019, we had some beers:
Oh man! I didn't know him closely, but we'd come into one anothers' orbits on Google+ and he was a great source of technical (and other) knowledge. One result of that is sitting a metre from me as I write this, as he'd turned me on to the Turris Omnia OpenWRT-based router.
Pace, Dave.
dlenski
I'm so sorry to hear of his death, and sending my prayers and wishes for peace and healing to his loved ones.
Like many others, I was inspired by his great attention to detail, his diligence, and his curiosity, which served as a fantastic example for many people working on tricky and important issues in networking and other technologies.
Those will be some big shoes to fill.
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i_am_a_peasant
Dave Täht was my initial motivation to get serious about getting into low level networking more than 8 years ago. Ever since then I’ve had the honor to co-develop various systems on multi terabit ISP routers. I’m really thankful for the insights he provided as I was trying to figure out how to configure WRED hardware blocks in our network ASICs. Men like Dave was one in hundred million if that. May he be forever remembered and his work live on forever.
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sinak
What sad news. Dave was an incredible human and very dedicated to making the Internet better and faster. What a loss.
Edit: copying over Vint Cerf's message that was posted on the bufferbloat mail list. I believe that's a public mail list so hopefully Vint doesn't mind:
OMG - that is truly terrible news! I could not say better than Frank already has how much Dave's work has helped to improve our experience of the Internet. I can't think of anyone more dedicated to the proposition that performance counts and should be pursued with determination and vigor. I've known Dave for many years and greatly valued his counsel and technical skills - to say nothing of his healthy sense of humor. I will miss him but will be always grateful to have known him.
dang, could we get a black bar?
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askonomm
His last name means "star" in Estonian. I was curious if his roots were from Estonia, but could not find any info. In any case, rest in peace Dave.
Argh, he was the immediately previous person before me to work on the Unicast Extension Project and still a coauthor on all of our reserved address drafts!
Now our lowest-address draft is at 50% deceased coauthors.
avh02
Never realised that Dave had so much impact on the networking world until now - he had contacted me out of the blue on linkedin years ago after a blog post about my cable/DSL connection woes - wish I talked to him a little more about it. I can see what people mean about him being present everywhere.
Seeing his name on HN, especially in this context, threw me off a little. RIP Dave.
yusyusyus
met him in prague. had his guitar. played a song for me and this other dude hanging out in the smoking area.
have a video of it if there is a good place to send it to.
RIP to a real one.
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raggi
Dave was ever-present in the areas he had passion for and that presence and unwavering advocacy had many positive outcomes. I'll miss his friendly challenges during future work in this space, they were always enjoyable and valuable even when we had differing approaches.
ggm
Hosted one of his measurement boxes for a while. Nice guy, very committed to researching the problem space.
pabs3
I wonder how many people will never be able to use his work because their router/other firmware is proprietary, GPL violating or otherwise non-upgradable.
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thimkerbell
I don't know him, or what happened to him. I do wonder, if there are members of the old guard who are feeling like the world is shutting off their options, if there is a way to know that and to help.
It goes deep into his fq_codel work and why it was such a game-changer. It's an informal setting so his personality shines through - seems like we didn't just lose a great technologist, but also a heck of a human.
Uzmanali
iam really inspired by his work on FQ-CoDel and CAKE, which has greatly boosted internet performance. His legacy will continue to inspire and benefit the networking community.
inemesitaffia
Truly hits different when it's someone you know at a personal level.
superidiot1932
What killed him?
omk
Inspired by his work on buffer bloat like so many others. Rest in peace.
I didn't know him, but followed his work on bufferbloat closely. I've never seen anyone work so diligently, for so many years, to fix a problem most people will never know even existed. And yet, that work will be felt by almost everyone on the internet. I'm sad knowing he's passed, and thankful to have seen his work. Rest in peace.
In 2012, he travelled to France and bought me a beer to thank me for my work on Org-Mode, and it was great. He was enthusiastic about this worldwide half-random connections, and insisted on how great it was to be able to connect with everyone in this way... we certainly miss him and that spirit.
He contributed to GNU Emacs Org-Mode with gnugol: https://list.orgmode.org/4D210A00.9070901@teklibre.org/
Learning about Bufferbloat in my undergrad, but more importantly that by running OpenWrt on my €20 home router and simply activating an (at the time) nonstandard queueing policy could make a shared internet connection infinitely more usable, blew my mind.
I never met him, but from what I saw on the relevant mailing lists, Dave was at the center of it all. Rest in peace.
Sorry to hear this. I was at Goto Chicago for one of his talks and he used a bunch of people to model TCP and participated and learned a lot about the protocol. Really nice person and great lecturer.
He also noted that GL INET devices have the LibreQos pre installed and recommended those routers.
Dave had a rtalk about Starlink at Wireless Battlemesh in Paris in 2019, we had some beers:
https://media.freifunk.net/v/lightning-talk-starlink
Rest in peace my friend.
Oh man! I didn't know him closely, but we'd come into one anothers' orbits on Google+ and he was a great source of technical (and other) knowledge. One result of that is sitting a metre from me as I write this, as he'd turned me on to the Turris Omnia OpenWRT-based router.
Pace, Dave.
I'm so sorry to hear of his death, and sending my prayers and wishes for peace and healing to his loved ones.
I interacted with him directly only once, while working on a [buffering-related issue in Open connect](https://gitlab.com/openconnect/openconnect/-/issues/582#note...).
Like many others, I was inspired by his great attention to detail, his diligence, and his curiosity, which served as a fantastic example for many people working on tricky and important issues in networking and other technologies.
Those will be some big shoes to fill.
Dave Täht was my initial motivation to get serious about getting into low level networking more than 8 years ago. Ever since then I’ve had the honor to co-develop various systems on multi terabit ISP routers. I’m really thankful for the insights he provided as I was trying to figure out how to configure WRED hardware blocks in our network ASICs. Men like Dave was one in hundred million if that. May he be forever remembered and his work live on forever.
What sad news. Dave was an incredible human and very dedicated to making the Internet better and faster. What a loss.
Edit: copying over Vint Cerf's message that was posted on the bufferbloat mail list. I believe that's a public mail list so hopefully Vint doesn't mind:
OMG - that is truly terrible news! I could not say better than Frank already has how much Dave's work has helped to improve our experience of the Internet. I can't think of anyone more dedicated to the proposition that performance counts and should be pursued with determination and vigor. I've known Dave for many years and greatly valued his counsel and technical skills - to say nothing of his healthy sense of humor. I will miss him but will be always grateful to have known him.
dang, could we get a black bar?
His last name means "star" in Estonian. I was curious if his roots were from Estonia, but could not find any info. In any case, rest in peace Dave.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_T%C3%A4ht
https://blog.cerowrt.org/
https://lists.bufferbloat.net/pipermail/bloat/2025-April/018...
Argh, he was the immediately previous person before me to work on the Unicast Extension Project and still a coauthor on all of our reserved address drafts!
Now our lowest-address draft is at 50% deceased coauthors.
Never realised that Dave had so much impact on the networking world until now - he had contacted me out of the blue on linkedin years ago after a blog post about my cable/DSL connection woes - wish I talked to him a little more about it. I can see what people mean about him being present everywhere.
Seeing his name on HN, especially in this context, threw me off a little. RIP Dave.
met him in prague. had his guitar. played a song for me and this other dude hanging out in the smoking area.
have a video of it if there is a good place to send it to.
RIP to a real one.
Dave was ever-present in the areas he had passion for and that presence and unwavering advocacy had many positive outcomes. I'll miss his friendly challenges during future work in this space, they were always enjoyable and valuable even when we had differing approaches.
Hosted one of his measurement boxes for a while. Nice guy, very committed to researching the problem space.
I wonder how many people will never be able to use his work because their router/other firmware is proprietary, GPL violating or otherwise non-upgradable.
I don't know him, or what happened to him. I do wonder, if there are members of the old guard who are feeling like the world is shutting off their options, if there is a way to know that and to help.
I recently listened to a podcast episode he was on: https://castbox.fm/app/castbox/player/id3692892/id372628820
It goes deep into his fq_codel work and why it was such a game-changer. It's an informal setting so his personality shines through - seems like we didn't just lose a great technologist, but also a heck of a human.
iam really inspired by his work on FQ-CoDel and CAKE, which has greatly boosted internet performance. His legacy will continue to inspire and benefit the networking community.
Truly hits different when it's someone you know at a personal level.
What killed him?
Inspired by his work on buffer bloat like so many others. Rest in peace.