04/01/2025
We are devastated to report that Dave Täht has passed away.
Dave was an amazing man, helping the world with FQ-CoDel and CAKE, fighting bufferbloat and trying to make the world a better place. Always willing to help, and without him – LibreQoS (and the other QoE solutions out there) wouldn’t exist.
Dave was an inspiration, and we all miss him. We’re reaching out to family and close friends to see if there’s anything we can do to help.
Dave was an inspiration to us. Dave’s contributions to Linux, FQ-CoDel, and CAKE improved internet connectivity around the world for millions of people. Bec
17 Comments
toomuchtodo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_T%C3%A4ht
https://blog.cerowrt.org/
https://lists.bufferbloat.net/pipermail/bloat/2025-April/018…
ggm
Hosted one of his measurement boxes for a while. Nice guy, very committed to researching the problem space.
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.
dredmorbius
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.
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?
schoen
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.
sophacles
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.
petedoyle
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.
zoobab
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.
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.
omk
Inspired by his work on buffer bloat like so many others. Rest in peace.
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.
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.
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.
lxgr
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.
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.
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.