I worked with Sally on many projects. She taught me more that anyone else about what it is to do good science in the field of networking. The lengths she went to to convince herself that she really understood what was happening, and wasn't just being deluded by a simulation bug, or a lucky case. In particular, her shepherding of the ns2 simulator over many years, and the time she spent on the test suite, so it was possible to use ns to exchange ideas between researchers in a rigorous manner. She didn't care much what other people thought - she was by far a more careful critic of her own work than any reviewer of her papers. RIP Sally.
A fun read. Sally Floyd, Craig Leres, Steve McCanne, Vern Paxson and of course Van Jacobsen, the LBNL Network Research Group, were heroes of mine earlier in my career. A terrible loss. Condolences to anyone here who know Floyd personally.
Van Jacobson explained it to us at Ford Aerospace around 1982 or so. Back then it was UUCP mail that was synching up. Mailers forwarded mail every 15 minutes or so, and they'd all synch up and try to call the same receiver at the same time. If you do "send mail, then wait 15 minutes", that happens, because the "send mail" part is variable time, longer if it's being held up by traffic. You have to start the next cycle N minutes after the start of the previous cycle, not the end, or you get strong synchronization.
I guess Dr. Floyd's work is not that famous, but in large part, the work by her and Van Jacobson unlocked the bandwidth potential of Internet. Without their work, the Internet as we all know might progress slower with 2-3 years setback.
Dr. Floyd's papers provided a very clear exposition of the ideas, making them very accessible to undergrads with minimal CS education. I would strongly recommend them to anyone with an interest in the topics.
Sally will be greatly missed, for sure... I was fortunate to have worked with her on the network simulator NS-2 team (VINT project) and met her several times at USC, ISI and at UC Berkeley (and many times in online conferencing, using the Mbone tools!), what a wonderful person she is, so calm and soft-spoken. She helped implement TCP and RED in NS-2, along with Van Jacobson, Lee Breslau, Steve McCanne and other established team members! She also worked with Vern Paxon on Internet traffic characterization, ... a work that was highly impactful and was integrated later into NS-2. She also gave her insightful feedback and input to PIM-SM and the multicast project that I worked on with Deborah Estrin and several other very esteemed researchers. There is so much more to her life that cannot fit here. I learned a lot from her publications, and from her personally when we had the opportunity to interact.
She is inspiring and will remain so. Her contributions will last long after her passing for sure!
