Career
A graduate of Johns Hopkins University, Muuss was a senior scientist specializing in geometric solid modeling, ray-tracing, MIMD architectures and digital computer networks at the United States Army Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland when he died. He wrote a number of software packages (including BRL-Computer-aided Design) and network tools (including ttcp and the concept of the default route or "default gateway") and contributed to many others (including BIND). However, the thousand-line ping, which he wrote in December 1983 while working at the Ballistic Research Laboratory, is the program for which he is most remembered.
Due to its usefulness, ping has been implemented on a large number of operating systems, initially BSD Unix, but later others including Windows and Mac Operating system X.
Muuss is mentioned in two books, The Cuckoo"s Egg () and Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier (), for his role in tracking down crackers.
He also is mentioned in Peter Salus"s A Quarter Century of Uniplex Information and Computing System. Muuss died in an automobile collision on Interstate 95 on November 20, 2000.
