# Steve McCanne

> Steve McCanne is an American computer scientist and technology founder whose work spans packet capture, multicast video, network performance, and data analytics. A co-founder of FastForward Networks and Riverbed and the founder and former CEO of Jut, he is listed by Brim Data as its Coding CEO. His Berkeley dissertation received the 1997 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award, and his current public work includes SuperDB.

- **Role:** Coding CEO at Brim Data
- **Organizations:** Brim Data, Jut, Riverbed Technology, FastForward Networks, Inktomi, University of California, Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** BS, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley, PhD, Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley
- **Known for:** Co-authored the Berkeley Packet Filter with Van Jacobson and contributed foundational packet-capture software including pcap and tcpdump., Received the 1997 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award., Co-founded FastForward Networks, acquired by Inktomi in 2000.

## Career timeline

- **1988-1996** — Worked at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on networking and MBone tools.
- **1993** — Co-authored the BSD Packet Filter paper with Van Jacobson, presented at Winter USENIX.
- **1996** — Completed his Berkeley doctorate and joined the Berkeley EECS faculty.
- **1997** — Received the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for Scalable Compression and Transmission of Internet Multicast Video.
- **1998** — Co-founded FastForward Networks.
- **2000** — Inktomi acquired FastForward Networks in a transaction reported at $1.3 billion; McCanne became Inktomi CTO.
- **2002** — Co-founded Riverbed Technology with Jerry Kennelly.
- **2004** — Riverbed began commercial product shipments in May.
- **2006** — Riverbed completed its IPO in September.
- **2009** — Named a Berkeley CS Distinguished Alumnus.
- **2013** — Left the Riverbed CTO role and founded Jut, which announced a $20 million Series B in November.
- **2015** — Jut released its operations data hub in open beta.
- **2018** — An early Brim prototype attracted longtime collaborator Phil Rzewski, who joined in late 2018.
- **2022** — Published tutorials on zq, super-structured data, and Go serialization.
- **2023** — Co-authored Zed: Leveraging Data Types to Process Eclectic Data at CIDR.

## Achievements

- Co-authored the Berkeley Packet Filter with Van Jacobson and contributed foundational packet-capture software including pcap and tcpdump.
- Received the 1997 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award.
- Co-founded FastForward Networks, acquired by Inktomi in 2000.
- Co-founded Riverbed, which completed an IPO in 2006.
- Selected for MIT Technology Review’s 2002 young-innovator cohort.
- Received Berkeley’s 2009 CS Distinguished Alumni Award.
- Co-authored the 2023 CIDR Zed paper.

## Latest updates

- **2026-10** — Research check: Brim Data’s public team page lists McCanne as Coding CEO; his GitHub profile identifies SuperDB among his projects. This is a verification date, not an appointment date.
- **2023-01** — Co-authored the CIDR paper Zed: Leveraging Data Types to Process Eclectic Data.
- **2022-07** — Published Easy Deserialization of Go Interface Values on the Brim Data blog.

## Links

- Website: https://www.brimdata.io/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenmccanne
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/SteveMcCanne
- GitHub: https://github.com/mccanne

---

Profile page: https://yespress.io/steve-mccanne
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-26