{"id":650636,"date":"2026-05-28T15:34:04","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T13:34:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=650636"},"modified":"2026-05-28T16:38:03","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T14:38:03","slug":"alan-barrett-the-man-who-created-co-za-has-died","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/internet\/650636-alan-barrett-the-man-who-created-co-za-has-died.html","title":{"rendered":"Alan Barrett, the man who created .co.za, has died"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Alan Barrett, the man who created the co.za zone, died in Cape Town today following a diagnosis of late-stage cancer about a month ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett\u2019s passing was confirmed on behalf of his wife Kerry and the family by two of his former Internet governance colleagues, Andrew Alston and Remco van Mook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are sharing this notice so that the community has accurate information at a moment when Kerry and the family need space to grieve,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett was among the group that established the first Internet connection to South African universities with Mike Lawrie in the early 1990s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lawrie\u2019s recollection of the event begins in 1988, when his team at Rhodes University set up the first FidoNet email link to the home of Randy Bush in Oregon, in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two other South African Internet pioneers \u2014 Alan Barrett at the University of Natal and Chris Pinkham at the University of Cape Town \u2014 took notice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett and Pinkham, who would go on to create Amazon Web Services, also wanted to connect their universities\u2019 email systems with the Rhodes network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pair established their email links by converting the protocols of their different systems to work with FidoNet using a process Lawrie dubbed \u201cmunging.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1991, Lawrie learned about TCP\/IP protocols and secured a sign-on to use what would become the backbone of the Internet at the University of Delaware.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rhodes was able to use the Post Office\u2019s X.25 system to log into Delaware\u2019s system and access the Internet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pinkham and Barrett wanted to link their universities into the system and paid R400 for a software package that would make the VAX computer they had access to behave like a router.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first attempts failed until Barrett came up with the idea to use open-source software called PC Route. Lawrie said this worked well and equipped the network with support for mail protocols like SMTP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The launch of .CO.ZA<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

On 4 June 1992, Alan Barrett created the .co.za zone, making it possible for people to register .co.za domain names.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Responsibility for the zone was assigned to a non-profit organisation called Uniforum in 1995. Uniforum was renamed the ZA Central Registry, and its legacy continues today as the ZA Registry Consortium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barrett worked with Pinkham to co-found the country\u2019s first commercial Internet service provider, The Internetworking Company of Southern Africa (Ticsa), in 1993.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pair sold Ticsa to UUNet SA in 1996, which was acquired by Verizon in 2006 and traded as Verizon Business. MTN bought Verizon Business South Africa in March 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1997, Barrett co-authored the proposal to create Africa\u2019s Regional Internet Registry, Afrinic,  and subsequently served on the steering committee tasked with bringing it into being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He served on the Afrinic board from 2004 to 2009 and was a member of the NRO Number Council from 2004 to 2014. In 2015, he was appointed CEO of Afrinic, a role he held until 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Outside Africa, he was a central participant in the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group and, until his death, served on the ICANN board on behalf of the Address Supporting Organisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAlan was a friend, a willing listener, and someone who always stepped up to help when called upon,\u201d Alston and Van Mook said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHis contributions to the African Internet ecosystem were second to none, and with his passing, we lose not only a friend but a giant of the industry.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alan Barrett, who helped establish the first Internet link in South Africa, has passed away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":650649,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[61521,58802,30782,105581,19484,24056,98329,102153,9095,19486,79740],"class_list":["post-650636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-african-network-information-centre-afrinic","tag-alan-barrett","tag-chris-pinkham","tag-internet-assigned-numbers-authority-iana","tag-internet-corporation-for-assigned-names-and-numbers-icann","tag-mike-lawrie","tag-randy-bush","tag-the-internetworking-company-of-southern-africa-ticsa","tag-uniforum","tag-za-central-registry-zacr","tag-za-registry-consortium-zarc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650636"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=650636"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":650661,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650636\/revisions\/650661"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/650649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}