Alan DeKok’s Path From Physics to Community Safety

When Alan DeKok started a facet challenge in community safety, he didn’t count on to begin a 27-year profession. In reality, he didn’t initially got down to work in computing in any respect.

DeKok studied nuclear physics earlier than making the change to part of community computing that’s foundational however—like nuclear physics—largely invisible to these in a roundabout way concerned within the area. Ultimately, a challenge he began as a pastime turned a full-time job: sustaining one of many main techniques that helps preserve the web safe.

At this time, he leads the FreeRADIUS Challenge, which he cofounded within the late Nineteen Nineties to develop what’s now probably the most broadly used Distant Authentication Dial-In Person Service (RADIUS) software program. FreeRADIUS is an open-source server that gives back-end authentication for many main web service suppliers. It’s utilized by international monetary establishments, Wi-Fi companies like Eduroam, and Fortune 50 firms. DeKok can be CEO of InkBridge Networks, which maintains the server and offers assist for the businesses that use it.

Reflecting on practically three a long time of expertise main FreeRADIUS, DeKok says he turned an knowledgeable in distant authentication “virtually by chance,” and the important thing to his profession has largely been luck. “I actually consider that it’s making ready your self for luck, being open to it, and having the abilities to capitalize on it.”

From Farming to Physics

DeKok grew up on a farm outdoors of Ottawa rising strawberries and raspberries. “Sitting on a tractor within the warmth shouldn’t be notably attention-grabbing,” says DeKok, who was extra fascinated with working with 8-bit computer systems than crops. As a scholar at Carleton College, in Ottawa, he discovered his option to physics as a result of he was fascinated with math however most well-liked the practicality of science.

Whereas pursuing a grasp’s diploma in physics, additionally at Carleton, he labored on a water-purification system for the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, an underground observatory then being constructed on the backside of a nickel mine. He would get up at 4:30 within the morning to drive as much as the positioning, descend 2 kilometers, then enter one of many world’s deepest clean-room services to work on the challenge. The system managed to attain one atom of impurity per cubic meter of water, “which is fairly insane,” DeKok says.

However after his grasp’s diploma, DeKok determined to take a special route. Though he discovered nuclear physics attention-grabbing, he says he didn’t see it as his life’s work. In the meantime, the Ph.D. college students he knew had been “fanatical about physics.” He had stored up his computing abilities via his schooling, which concerned loads of programming, and determined to search for jobs at computing firms. “I used to be out of physics. That was it.”

Nonetheless, physics taught him useful classes. For one, “It’s important to perceive the massive image,” DeKok says. “The power to inform the big-picture story in requirements, for instance, is extraordinarily necessary.” This ability helps DeKok clarify to requirements our bodies how a protocol acts as one hyperlink in your complete chain of occasions that should happen when a consumer needs to entry the web.

He additionally discovered that “strategies are extra necessary than data.” It’s simple to search for data, however physics taught DeKok the way to break down an issue into manageable items to give you an answer. “Once I was ultimately working within the {industry}, the methods that got here naturally to me, popping out of physics, didn’t appear to be taught as effectively to the individuals I knew in engineering,” he says. “I might catch up in a short time.”

Founding FreeRADIUS

In 1996, DeKok was employed as a software program developer at an organization known as Gandalf, which made tools for ISDN, a precursor to broadband that enabled digital transmission of knowledge over phone traces. Gandalf went underneath a few 12 months later, and he joined CryptoCard, an organization offering {hardware} units for two-factor authentication.

Whereas at CryptoCard, DeKok started spending extra time working with a RADIUS server. When customers need to hook up with a community, RADIUS acts as a gatekeeper and verifies their identification and password, determines what they will entry, and tracks periods. DeKok moved on to a brand new firm in 1999, however he didn’t need to lose the networking abilities he had developed. No different open-source RADIUS servers had been being actively developed on the time, and he noticed a spot available in the market.

The identical 12 months, he began FreeRADIUS in his free time and it “regularly took over my life,” DeKok says. He continued to work on the open-source software program as a pastime for a number of years whereas bouncing round firms in California and France. “Nearly by chance, I turned one of many extra senior individuals within the area. Then I doubled down on that and began the enterprise.” He based NetworkRADIUS (now known as InkBridge Networks) in 2008.

By that time, FreeRADIUS was already being utilized by 100 million individuals each day. The corporate now employs specialists in Canada, France, and the United Kingdom who work collectively to assist FreeRADIUS. “I’d say at the least half of the individuals on the earth get on the web by being authenticated via my software program,” DeKok estimates. He attributes that progress largely to the software program being open supply. Initially a option to enter the market with little funding, going open supply has allowed FreeRADIUS to compete with larger firms as an industry-leading product.

Though the software program is essential for sustaining safe networks, most individuals aren’t conscious of it as a result of it really works behind the scenes. DeKok is commonly met with shock that it’s nonetheless in use. He compares RADIUS to a constructing basis: “You want it, however you by no means give it some thought till there’s a crack in it.”

27 Years of Fixes

Through the years, DeKok has maintained FreeRADIUS by regularly making small fixes. Like utilizing a ratcheting instrument to make a change inch by inch, “you shouldn’t underestimate that ratchet impact of tiny little fixes that add up over time,” he says.

He’s seen the challenge via minor patches and extra vital fixes, like when researchers uncovered a widespread vulnerability DeKok had been making an attempt to repair since 1998. He additionally watched a would-be successor to the community protocol, Diameter, rise and fall in recognition within the 2000s and 2010s. (Diameter gained traction in cellular functions however has regularly been phased out within the shift to 5G.) Although Diameter affords enhancements, RADIUS is much easier and already broadly carried out, giving it an edge, DeKok explains.

And he stays assured about its future. “Individuals ask me, ‘What’s subsequent for RADIUS?’ I don’t see it dying.” Estimating that billions of {dollars} of apparatus run RADIUS, he says, “It’s by no means going to go away.”

About his personal profession, DeKok says he plans to maintain engaged on FreeRADIUS, exploring new markets and merchandise. “I by no means anticipated to have an organization and lots of people working for me, my title on all types of requirements, and clients everywhere in the world. However it labored out that approach.”

This text seems within the March 2026 print challenge as “Alan DeKok.”