Alvestrand was born in
Namsos,
Norway, received his education from
Bergen Cathedral School and the
Norwegian Institute of Technology, and has worked for
Norsk Data,
UNINETT, EDB Maxware,
Cisco Systems, and
Google. He is an author of several important
Request for Comments (RFCs), many in the general area of
Internationalization and localization, most notable the documents required for interoperability between
SMTP and
X.400. Since the start of the use of OIDs he has run a front end to the hierarchy of assignments according to X.208. At the end of 2007 Alvestrand was selected for the
ICANN Board, where he remained until December 2010. In 2001 he became a member of the
Unicode Board of Directors. He was a co-chair of the IETF EAI and USEFOR WGs. He was a member of the
Norid Board, and the RFC Independent Submissions Editorial Board.{{cite web ==Publications==