Rémi Després (born January 16, 1943) is a French engineer and entrepreneur known for his contributions on data networking.
[3][4] As such, he introduced the concept of "graceful saturated operation",[5] which was referenced by Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf in their seminal 1974 paper on internetworking, "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication".
[6] He named and formalized the concept of virtual circuits and, with his team at CNET, he validated it on the RCP experimental network.
Since 2003, Rémi Després has been working as an independent researcher and consultant, mainly contributing to IETF to facilitate deployment of IPv6, the protocol that had become necessary to extend the number of customer addresses of the Internet.
In 2011, Rémi Després and Alexandre Cassen received the Itojun Service Award[17] of the Internet Society for their IPv6 work.