About Layer 9
A bridge between the people who build the Internet and the people who must govern, fund, and secure it.
Making solid decisions in the often-convoluted world of the Internet and its interrelated technologies and policies is frequently both critical and challenging. Few non-Internet-focused organizations have the resources, time, or interest to develop deep expertise in the wide range of Internet technologies and policies, understand the business opportunities and security risks those technologies represent, or predict the impact of new technologies or emergent Internet-related policy, regulation, or legislation.
Layer 9 Technologies was founded to close that gap. Our team brings multiple decades of Internet operational, technical, information security, business, regulatory, and policy experience — and just as importantly, a practice of translation: explaining technology to decision-makers, and institutional reality to technologists. Whether it's analyzing the impact of regulation, training your staff, reviewing technical documents, or vetting infrastructure and operational procedures, we work at the boundary where the two worlds meet.
Layer 9 Technologies is a certified Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB).
The name
Layer 8 is money. Layer 9 is politics.
The seven-layer OSI model is one of networking's foundational abstractions — and one of its longest-running jokes is that the stack doesn't really stop at layer 7. Network operators have variously proposed layer 8 as "the user," "money," or "management," and layer 9 as "politics — where the most difficult problems live."
The canonical version, though, came on a t-shirt designed by our late friend and colleagueEvi Nemeth: the seven familiar layers, topped by a Financial layer and a Political layer. Her framing was semi-facetious and entirely serious — no analysis of Internet technology is complete without the financial and political context it operates in. The idea has since been cited in legal scholarship on Internet governance (Richard Whitt's "Through a Glass, Darkly", Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal), which credits Nemeth's nine-layer model directly.
We named the company for her insight. Everything we do happens at layers 8 and 9.
// tribute
Evi Nemeth 1940 – 2013
Engineer, sailor, author of the legendary Unix System Administration Handbook, and mentor to generations of system and network administrators. Evi had a rare gift: she could make the deepest technical truths feel obvious, and she never lost sight of the humans and institutions the technology served. She was lost at sea in 2013 aboard the schoonerNina, doing what she loved. This company carries her layer forward.
People
Meet the team
Negar Conrad
co-founder · partner · CEO
Results-driven senior leader with 20+ years in program and project management, strategic planning, and business process development. With Master's degrees in Electrical and Biomedical Engineering, she steers multifaceted projects at the intersection of technical intricacies and policy frameworks — building consensus among diverse stakeholders and translating vision into actionable strategy.
David Conrad
co-founder · partner · CTO
Involved in the Internet since 1983: protocol development, network operations, and governance of the Internet's unique identifiers. Co-founder and first Director General of APNIC, co-founder of APRICOT, former Executive Director of ISC, General Manager of IANA, and ICANN CTO. IETF participant since 1992 and co-author of five RFCs.
Paul Ebersman
principal · protocol & infrastructure
Designing, building, and maintaining key Internet infrastructure since the ARPANET era — from UUNET (employee #10) and the ALTER.NET backbone to MSN's dialup network and Comcast's DNS infrastructure. Trainer, protocol SME, and hands-on architect for organizations that need deep operational expertise.
Avri Doria
advisor · governance & policy
Independent researcher working across Internet governance's multistakeholder landscape: UN WGIG and WGEC, IGF Secretariat and MAG, IRTF Routing Research Group chair, GNSO Council chair, and ICANN Board member. Recipient of the 2014 ICANN Multistakeholder Award.