Carpenter spent 25 years, from 1971 to 1996, working at the
European Laboratory for
Particle Physics (
CERN). He initially wrote software for process control systems and later served as the head of the networking group from 1985 to 1996, working alongside
Robert Cailliau and
Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the
World Wide Web.[3][4] He took three years off of his CERN career to teach undergraduate computer science at
Massey University in
New Zealand.[2]
When Carpenter left CERN, he joined
IBM, where he was an IBM Distinguished Engineer working on Internet Standards and Technology between 1997 and 2007. From 1999 to 2001 he was at
iCAIR, international Center for Advanced Internet Research, sponsored by IBM at
Northwestern University in
Evanston, Illinois. Upon leaving iCAIR, he was based in
Switzerland, first in
Zurich, then
Geneva.
Carpenter served from March 1994 to March 2002 on the
Internet Architecture Board, which he chaired for five years.
In 1996, he edited an important memo on the Architectural Principles of the Internet.[8]
He has worked on
IPv6[9][10][11][12][13] and on
differentiated services[14][15] and served as the DiffServ working group chair. He also served as a Trustee of the
Internet Society, and was Chairman of its Board of Trustees for two years until June 2002. In March 2005, he became IETF Chair, a position he held until March 2007.[16]
AM Turing's ACE Report of 1946 and Other Papers, Vol. 10 of
Charles Babbage Institute Reprint Series for the History of Computing, B.E. Carpenter, R.W. Doran (eds),
MIT Press, 1986.