He led the team that developed the OSPF reference implementation at the University of Maryland, including Louis Mamakos and Mike Petry.

From 1995 to 1999, he was chief technology officer at Novell,[3] helping to move that company from the proprietary Xerox Network Systems protocol to also embrace TCP/IP.

In October 2009 Ricart was named president and CEO of National LambdaRail, the high-speed networking platform owned by the U.S. research and education community.

Ricart is a co-founder of US Ignite, a nonprofit organization launched in 2012 with support from the National Science Foundation and numerous public and private stakeholders.

[6] US Ignite's mission is to foster the development of broadband-intensive applications with an eye toward "smart city" and other public good uses.

[7] He previously served on the boards of the Internet Society, BITNET, CACI, First USA Financial Services, Santa Cruz Operation, and NASULGC.