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Ed Krol

b. 1951

Network manager and author

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About Ed Krol

Born 1951. Ed Krol is an American writer and computer scientist.

Ed Krol (born August 21, 1951) is the former network manager at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and the former assistant director of Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services (CITES) at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He is also the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Internet and The Whole Internet (User's Guide and Catalog).

Background Krol was born on August 21, 1951, and grew up in Chicago, Illinois. He received his B.A. from the University of Illinois and spent his entire career there.

Career In 1985, Krol began working at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). He was the network manager for the NCSA when the contract was received to establish the NSFNet, and led the team in the network development. He helped develop the Frequently Asked Questions format when he published the popular user's guide Hitchhiker's Guide to the Internet in 1987, which was funded by the National Science Foundation. In 1989, he became the assistant director for Network Information Services, Computing, and Communications Service Office at the University of Illinois.

In 1992, Krol published The Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog, which was noted by the New York Public Library as one of its Books of the Century in 1995. The book was translated into over ten languages and sold over a million copies. This aided the worldwide acceptance and spread of the Internet. In 1999, Krol and Kiersten Conner-Sax published a sequel titled The Whole Internet User's Guide: The Next Generation.

In popular culture Krol's daughter, Molly Krol, is the namesake of the molly-guard, a slang term for a shield placed around an emergency stop that prevents it from being inadvertently pressed.

Works

Awards Inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame 2017

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Important facts

Birth century
Nationality
Education
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign

Contemporaries

People whose lives overlapped Ed Krol's

Frequently asked questions

Who is Ed Krol?

Network manager and author

When was Ed Krol born?

Ed Krol was born on 21 August 1951 in United States.

What is Ed Krol's occupation?

Ed Krol is a writer and computer scientist.

What nationality is Ed Krol?

Ed Krol is American.

Sources & further reading

· Wikipedia: Ed Krol

· Wikidata: Q5335062

· DBpedia: Ed Krol

Cite this page

APA: Biography.guide. (2026). Ed Krol. https://biography.guide/ed-krol/

MLA: "Ed Krol." Biography.guide, https://biography.guide/ed-krol/.

Chicago: "Ed Krol." Biography.guide. https://biography.guide/ed-krol/.

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