The Man Who Wired the Internet Together Router by Router

Before the internet became a global utility, someone had to build the machines that actually moved data between networks. This episode tells the story of William 'Bill' Yeager, the Stanford engineer who wrote the code for the first true multiprotocol router in 1985 — a piece of software that became the foundation for Cisco Systems' early routers. We trace how Yeager's little-known work, done almost as a side project in the university's medical center networking group, quietly solved a problem that everyone else was ignoring: getting incompatible computer networks to talk to each other. When Cisco co-founders Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner took his code and turned it into a commercial product, Yeager got almost nothing — and Cisco became a $100 billion company. Lucas and Luna explore what his story says about the gap between invention and reward in Silicon Valley, and why the router — not the browser or the search engine — might be the single most underappreciated piece of internet infrastructure. #WilliamYeager #CiscoSystems #RouterHistory #InternetInfrastructure #StanfordUniversity #LenBosack #SandyLerner #MultiprotocolRouter #TechnologyHistory #SiliconValley #NetworkEngineering #InventionVsReward #TechOrigins #FexingoBusiness #BusinessPodcast #TechHistory #UnderappreciatedTech #ComputerNetworking Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo