Author of the freeware network tool Ping, Muuss was a senior scientist specializing in geometric solid modeling, ray-tracing, MIMD architectures, and digital computer networks at the United States Army Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. A graduate of Johns Hopkins University, Muuss wrote a number of software packages (including BRL-CAD) and network tools (including ttcp and the concept of the default route or "default gateway") and contributed to many others (including BIND). However, the thousand-line ping, which he wrote in December 1983 while working at the Ballistic Research Laboratory, is the program for which he is most remembered.
Due to its usefulness, ping has been implemented on a large number of operating systems, initially BSD Unix, but later others including Windows and Mac OS X. In 1993, he was among 180 individuals — who contributed to the CSRG's 4.4BSD-Lite release — to whom the USENIX Association gave a Lifetime Achievement Award (Flame) to the Computer Systems Research Group; University of California, Berkeley.
Muuss is mentioned in two books, The Cuckoo's Egg (ISBN 0-7434-1146-3) and Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier (ISBN 0-684-81862-0), for his role in tracking down crackers. He is also mentioned in Peter Salus's A Quarter Century of UNIX.
He died in an automobile collision on Interstate 95 on November 20, 2000. The Michael J. Muuss Research Award, set up by his friends and family, memorializes him at Johns Hopkins University.
