VINT CERF
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Forty years ago—on December 5, 1969—the U.S. Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) connected four computer network nodes at the University of California, Los Angeles, (U.C.L.A.), the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, Calif., U.C. Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah for the first time. This doubled the size of the embryonic ARPANET, the network that would grow over the years into the global nexus of interconnected computers we know today as the Internet.
Vint Cerf has been there from the beginning, from with his work co-developing TCP/IP (the communications protocols that the Internet uses to route information across different networks and hubs) to his present position as Google's chief Internet evangelist.
We sat down with Cerf, who is often called "the father of the Internet," to talk about why the ARPANET was built and how it grew to become the Internet, not to mention the pros and cons of social networks.
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
While we're honoring the 40th anniversary of the first time the four-node ARPANET was connected, what in your opinion was the single most important "event" in the development of the Internet?
Choosing a single most important development is incredibly hard to do because a lot of different things had to happen before the Internet could be deployed in the fashion it is today. ARPANET validated packet switching, which was important, because without that we wouldn't have gone down the path of toward the Internet. The idea was that you could grow a system like the Internet one network at a time and then interconnect them. In some sense the most important thing was the invention of the architecture protocols that enabled the Internet. Then came the implementation [on November 22, 1977] that interconnected different packet networks together. This included a radio network and a satellite network connected as well as the ARPANET. The most important thing in this three-network test was to show the TCP/IP protocol would link all three together.
What were your thoughts at the time, as a U.C.L.A. graduate student, when you realized ARPANET was going to be a successful endeavor? In which direction did you think the technology would go?
We could see how useful this was going to be almost immediately. The absolute first asset was remote access to people's computers. Remote access to someone else's time-share computer (most computers at the time were connected to mainframe servers and access was shared) was a very powerful tool. For the first time, you could use someone else's applications rather than just the ones you wrote yourself.
The impetus for this came out of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), which was looking to make computer technology more relevant to the military. In the late 1960s every computer science department sponsored by ARPA said they needed the most advanced computers to do this work. So ARPA came up with the idea to connect computers for resource sharing. We immediately recognized the utility of that.
Although ARPANET was initially designed for the military (and only later on became available to defense labs, university labs and the general public), was it designed with an eye toward potential commercial applications, as well?
ARPA was responsible for developing systems for military command and control, but ARPA was also interested in pushing boundaries of computer usage for military applications. ARPA wanted to solve its immediate research problems, which led to remote access. By 1985, the National Science Foundation realized the utility of this for all research institutions supported by the NSF around the United States and built the NSFNET backbone for those institutions. (In 1988 the U.S. Federal Networking Council approved the interconnection of the NSFNET with MCI's mail system, a move that kicked off the commercialization of the Internet.)
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13 Comments
Add CommentNow where was Al Gore in al of this????
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNow where is Al Gore in all this? ? ?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAl recived is B.A. from Harvard University. and was in the U.S. Army, inventing the internet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHappy Birthday and Hugzzzz
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHappy Birthday & Hugzzz
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRe: Al Gore: In an essay in 2000, Vint Cerf said, " ...as the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo how does "contribution" mean "creating" now? Is this the newspeak?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAl Gore never claimed to have invented the internet. The claim that he did, is an invention. Read what wiki says about Al Gore's contribution to the Internet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore_and_information_technology
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVint Cerf is absolutely amazing. After reading about him in the new Harvard book "Wired for Thought: how the brain is shaping the future of the Internet" I only grew more impressed. His vision, along with the rest of the early inventors really helped create not only the Internet but also a powerful attempt at artificial intelligence.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo is "creating" closer to inventing? Or contributing? Read his ACTUAL quote. He did not say invent, he said create.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAl Gore, together with Vint Cerf and Kahn, did create the Internet. Cerf and Kahn just would not give him full credit for his contribution. Same goes for artificial intelligence and many other things.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVint Cerf himself, along with Bob Kahn have stated, "We don't think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he 'invented' the Internet. Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@PhilJourdan, is this the quote to which you are referring, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet"? If so, then you would have noted in Vint Cerf's response to the controversy he stated, "we don't think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he 'invented' the Internet. Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet." Mr. Cerf would also later state: "Al Gore had seen what happened with the National Interstate and Defence Highways Act of 1956, which his father introduced as a military bill. It was very powerful. Housing went up, suburban boom happened, everybody became mobile. Al was attuned to the power of networking much more than any of his elective colleagues. His initiatives led directly to the commercialization of the Internet. So he really does deserve credit". Newt Gingrich also stated: "In all fairness, it's something Gore had worked on a long time. Gore is not the Father of the Internet, but in all fairness, Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet..." or did you stop reading when you found the part you liked?
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