Slashdot Mirror
Ask Dr. Vinton Cerf About the Internet
If anyone can claim to have "invented the Internet," (or at least to have co-invented it) it's Vint Cerf, who never makes this claim himself. But he's certainly had a hand in shaping most of what we call "the Internet" today, and is now working on taking the Internet or something like it to Mars and other planets. A Google Search for "Vint Cerf" brings up thousands of responses, so you should have no trouble coming up with a unique, interesting question for him. (As is usual with Slashdot interviews, we'll send 10 of the top-moderated questions to Dr. Cerf about 24 hours after this post, and publish his answers shortly after he gets them back to us.)
What was your take on the media kerfuffle that grew around the misquotation of Al Gore's claim that "During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet."?
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
What was it like working with Al Gore?
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
Dr. Cerf,
do you believe that the proliferation of internet will give rise to numerous GPS/IP points of contacts for each person, object, etc? I could see a myriad uses for this technology, real time tracking of people, real time product distribution, etc. There are obviously privacy issues but is there anyone in the industry developing prodcuts or solutions for this market?
And we have no idea.
Unix has always been helpful with the invention of the Internet as well as it's implimentation, from the first versions from AT&T all the way to Linux, all the BSDs, and more. With the continuing work, will further technologies be enhanced now that we have the free/open sourced Unix implementations? As is, I belive we have a working IP6 stack in Linux.
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
All those years ago did you ever imagine that things like http://goat.se would appear? In hindsight, is there anything you could have done to plug that hole, so to speak?
would you allow the phrase "surfing the net" to be changed to "cerfing the net"?
Although there's a certain moral argument to an individual's right to privacy, there's also a statistical argument that people simply act irresponsibly when given anonymnity.
What's your take on anonymnity in the internent? Is a good thing? A bad thing? Just a thing not worth talking about?
.. preferably with a large Venetian vase that goes thwack every time he makes that weird "I invented the internet" claim?
Hindsight being 20/20. What is the #1 thing you would change about the internet if you could go back to the early days?
Dan Bricker
My new title at the office is "Vice-President of Everything Else"
that we are "Cerf"ing the net? (sorry, i had to say it)
What is your perspective on DRM? Specifically, do you think that the Fritz chip, Palladium, and lobbying of the MPAA/RIAA, will change the Internet fundamentally? Can the Internet be tamed at this point? If so, do you find this DRM and such to infringe upon fair use? Is there legitamacy to the common fear that in the future, computers themselves, in order to gain access to the Internet, will have so many restrictions that the Internet itself will begin to suffer from it?
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
Two questions....
1)Did you ever work with Al Gore? (not really a question)
2)How would we tansmit (speeds, reliability, etc) from Mars to Earth? To me it seems that with solar flares and metors, reliability would be low. Also how will you be able to get a reliable test of connection from Earth to Mars? How would we test this connection without being on Mars?
It has become a truism that the internet "treats censorship like damage and routes around it" and in general I agree. This feature is possible because of the decentralized (nowadays called "P2P") nature of TCP/IP. What I would like to know is, what are your feelings about services built on top of TCP/IP that are NOT decentralized (but could be)?
Obviously it would be difficult to make a web page "available from anywhere", that's not the kind of thing I'm talking about. I'm talking about a site like Slashdot. It professes to be an open, community-moderated discussion site. Yet in reality it suffers from a top-down moderation scheme (with a tiny bit of distributed moderation thrown in). Does Slashdot's moderation system follow the open principles of the Internet? In general, would you say that people who try to exert fascist control over what is essentially a public forum are kinda...stupid?
Do you think the Internet has changed the world? Is it now a better place?
Remember we had an Ask Al Gore.
As vice president of MCI Digital Information Services from 1982-1986, you led the engineering of MCI Mail, the first commercial email service to be connected to the Internet.
As most engineers know, we have to make some sacrifices with every project and get rid of certain features that we had hoped would be there but cannot due to monetary constraints, etc.
Could you explain some of the more difficult decisions you had to make as the head of this particular project? Moreover, was there ever a point in the project where no one thought the final product was viable?
Thanks.
Do you use AOL Instant Messenger?
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
What do you see happening over the next few years in the battle between the Internet Protocol community (computing/telecom hardware manufacturers, service providers, users) and the Intellectual Property industry (RIAA/MPAA/etc.)?
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
considering your work with TCP/IP protocols what would you change now that you can look back retrospectively to how it has been used/misused. What would you incorporate into designs now that weren't even thought of at the time that TCP/IP was created?
Since the beginning the net has been ever-evolving by leaps and bounds. What single innovation/technology do you think has had the most profound effect on the net as a whole?
(i.e.: xml, php/asp, etc...)
I would like to know what thing you would change in the modern Internet that you think would make it better. Less regulation? A different protocol? A method of removing vulnerable points to eliminate certain types of network-based attacks? Built-in encryption? Or something else entirely that most users haven't even dreamed up yet?
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
What do you think about big media corporations attempting to wrest control of the internet away from the rest of the world?
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
Mr. Cerf, in light of the copyright battles, DMCA, legal battles, etc., surrounding organizations like RIAA, MPAA, etc., as well as the increasing popularity of broadband and wireless, what do you see the Internet as in five years?
Of all of the surprising uses that people have invented for the Internet, which surprised you the most (good or bad)?
It brought the net to the masses.
No matter the hype, the pros and cons, the rather primitive, raw and clumsy IP protocol proved its way. And the most fantastic is that its broadcast nature, what some people considered a drawback, proved to be one of its main advantages. We have seen it covering the whole world, proving its ideology on wars (well IP was a DoD protocol for a war situation wasn't it?) and even reaching Mars. However this same primitive, raw and clumsy nature keeps on... And we see lots of troubles on security, performance and reliability. It seems that even Mars is something harder for IP to reach.
Well, is IP protocol The Wheel? And is will this wheel be always a near-round polygon with several holes on it? Isn't any avenue of future for a better protocol? Will we see "ping Mars - timeout, timeout, timeout, timeout - 48 minutes - Mars pinged 80% lost packets" as a common reality?
If you could revise Hafner and Lyon's book "Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet", what changes would you make?
- Tim
The Internet has moved from a research project to a part of mainstream life in less than a decade. Even the "Digital Divide" has turned out to be less of a problem than feared, with most schools and libraries (at least in the U.S.) providing access to anyone who wants it. Pretty impressive.
But what about the development of the Internet has disappointed you? Commercial dominance? Trivialization of the new resource? "Digital Divide"? Security problems? The Microsoft monoculture? The hype of the bubble circa 1999?
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
If this "Internet" of yours catches on, do you think there is any chance that it will affect the way people interact with existing media, such as text, music and movies?
lysergically yours
In the earlier days, did you ever think that 32 bits for IP addressing would eventually not be enough for everybody?
It's worth noting that he wrote those words when Clinton was still President and Gore -- you know, the elected President of the United States -- was still VP. Makes me nostalgic for the days when we had an administration that wasn't living in the Dark Ages. [sigh]
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
How has the "internet" as it is commonly defined today changed your life?
Do you prefer people to call you "Dr. Cerf" (a string literal which I had never seen before viewing this article), or simply "Vint Cerf?"
...How many "Cerf the Net" jokes have you heard? What's the best one?
-b
Do you read Slashdot? What do you think of it, both as a news source, and as a use of the Internet (user comments, moderation, meta moderation, etc.)?
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
don't you hate that it's not called "Cerf-ing" the net?
Warning: Too many connections in /prod/www/virtual/kerneltrap.com/www/htdocs/includ es/database.mysql.inc on line 7
Too many connections
My, my, the slashdot effect strikes again...
How much time do you spend on the internet in an average day? Home or work?
Also, do you think the word "internet" should be capitalized?
Thanks for helping to make the world a better place.
Being one of the founders of the internet, and I am sure being your baby, you have followed its growing up. (Must be a proud parent ?!)
To this end, I am questioning where you think the internet will go in 30 years from now?
With the advent of broadband technologies now being delivered to end-users, and P2P applications that are becoming so prevelant on the internet today, do you think that in the future network backbone providers will start imposing data limits, or that more and more bandwidth will get thrown at users?
Do you think in the near future that we will finally get a global rollout of IPv6? What do you think could be done to push this along?
On a more personal note, and I am not sure if you can talk about this, but with the loss of MCI Worldcom, what are you going to do with yourself?
Thanks for your time Dr Cerf.
Berny
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
IPv6 holds solutions to many of the problems the Internet faces today; but it's still almost exclusively an IPv4 world out there. The usual vicious cycle applies: no one wants to support it until it's widely used, and no one wants to use it until it's widely supported. How, and when, do you see this logjam being broken up?
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
Isn't Vint Cerf the head of ICANN, the corrupt bunch of scumbags in charge of domain names?
Knowing what you know now, what would you have fixed in the "Internet" as a structure. What hindsight have you now that makes you wish you had made other choices?
did you ever imagine that things like http://goat.se would appear?
"Goat.se" would be a Swedish site. The working link: Goatse.cx. But watch out: it goes to a disgusting picture of a man's stretched anus.
Along similar lines, Dr. Cerf, did you think that the Internet would ever incubate so-called "memes", transmitted through links to music videos, such as "All Your Base Are Belong To Us", "Hampster Dance", "Hatten är din", "Yatta!", "We Drink Ritalin", and the other things that can be found on memepool?
Will I retire or break 10K?
How much would you just love to kick Bernie Ebbers right in the balls?
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
I never thought I'd be able to e-mail my mother. I never though I'd be able to access the public library's "card" catalog from home. I never thought there'd be a more compelling screen than my television set for wasting time.-)
How do you find yourself using the Internet, in ways that would have surprised you a decade ago?
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
It is a long time rumor that the Arpanet (the predecessor to the current day Internet) was designed to survive a nuclear attack which could "disable" a number of nodes. However, taking into account changes which have had to happen with the evolution of the Internet (for example, the closure of 'open relay mail servers' which could have 'bounced' the email around 'dead or unreachable nodes', plus the 'sudden' closure of major backbone providers such as KPNQwest) - do you think the Internet could still survive a major 'node failure'?
The internet, in order to work even at the most basic technical level, needs some standards; some governace. What do you think is the proper scope of that governace/standard setting, who are the constituents, and what are the proper mechanisms for governing?
How do they differ from what we have to day? On the whole, are you optimistic or pessimistic about all this?
Do you think the Internet is still resilient, able to withstand the disparition of any major concentration point?
If not, what could be done to restore this capacity?
How do you feel about the proliferation of the "web" and how it has more or less overshadowed "the internet" for the vast majority of the "wired" portion of humanity? Has the amount of frivilous crap that has been allowed to flow over the wires benefitted or people or not, verses if the internet was still just for scientists and students and was restricted to services such as connecting computers for colaberative use and sharing of files that no one is going to get sued over?
Seeing how there's so much interesting information to be found on the net ('interesting' being good or bad, depending), what do you think about mandatory filtering on public (library, etc) computers? Whose responsability is it to decide what we can and can't see?
Triv
Today's internet seems to be destined to become the next cable TV. If this were to happen, how long would you estimate that it would take to construct a new grassroots internet, knowing what we know today?
What's your take on the ICANN events? The elections, the resolution protocols, etc.? Do you think they are an effective body?
Dear Dr Cerf
Last year, Jay Brockman and colleagues at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana sent out packets with carefully crafted checksums such that only the packet with the checksum which solved their mathematical problem returned an ack packet.
article here
this kind of distributed brute force search could be useful in the huge search spaces of ai.
Furthermore, instead of a single computer pretending it is a neural network, a different application of distributed parasitic computing could allow a network of computers to be tricked into having each computer spend a few clock cycles pretending it is a neuron.
Would you support the development future network protocols which encourage these kind of facilities?
Thanks
Not necessarily what you're working on next (although that would be interesting), but what do you think might be the next really big thing? What will be the next technological achievement to affect all of humanity? Are there any projects out there that are still small, like the internet was in the 70's and 80's, but which you believe may mushroom into a world-changing invention?
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
In a recent presentation with John Chambers of Cisco, he claimed that streaming media on demand, and therefore, digital rights protection was necessary to grow the Internet into the next phase. Many other people have the idea that the computer and the television should merge before the Internet will "advance."
Others take the Sony approach: the Internet will advance when we can use it as a facilitator -- such as being able to store photos or video from handheld cameras to servers, or access it from cell phones and PDAs for messaging and Bluetooth-type functionality.
Are there other approaches that you've seen (or considered!) for utilization of the Internet that don't head down these two widely-touted avenues?
"It remains to be seen if the human brain is powerful enough to solve the problems it has created." Dr. Richard Wallace
TCP/IP was originally designed as interim solution until OSI could be finished. When do you expect that to happen?
"The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance." -Thomas Jefferson
I never ask a question. I want to ask a question.
When you were doing all the initial work, putting things together, and figuring out how things 'should' be, did you ever consider how easy it would become?
I mean, did you ever in your wildest dreams imagine AOL, or something like it? Instant Messaging, Plug and Play, and everything else? To me, back in the good old days (tm) the obfuscation of computer networking was a boon, even in the early '90's. Like Usenet before 1996. I'll admit to enjoying things maybe a bit more when everyone and their grandmother didn't contribute to discussions with one sided opinions in all caps.
So, I guess it's a to part question - did you ever imagine it becoming so easy, and do you wish it had stayed harder?
What do you think about Distributed.net and other distributed computing projects that utilize the internet? At any point during your work before the mid-90's, did you ever invision such a concept as distributed computing over a worldwide inter-network being a viable alternative to expensive supercomputers?
Building on that last question, did you at any time consider the possibility of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against a single host on the inter-network, or against the inter-network as a whole? If so, what, if any safeguards did you consider implementing to protect against such problems?
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
In your opinion, how have centralization of connectivity and the Domain Name System changed the character of the 'Net? With a lot of the cross-country traffic going through the MAE's and a severe lack of interconnection between providers, the network certainly isn't as robust as it was at other points during its growth. But in addition to that, the extensive use of DNS has distracted people from the underpinnings of their Internet experience (as has the move by many browsers to stop requiring the scheme ["http://", etc.] at the start of URI's).
In what ways can we make the average user more appreciative of the technology underlying their actions? Or is the way forward to turn in the Internet into an appliance of sorts, something that "just works" for all but a few people who truly understand the engineering involved?
Jouster
Where do we go from here? 50 years from now, how will the internet have evolved?
Another person often dubbed "creator of the internet" was Jon Postel. How would you compare your role with his; and, if you can answer such a loaded question, if the internet had to be invented without one of you, which person (not being involved) would constitute a greater loss?
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
The Secret Service/NSA/FBI/CIA assure us that evil criminal masterminds and cyberterrorists are poised to take down the internet and cripple the global economy at any moment. Given the accuracy of their past predictions, this too will surely come to pass. When it does, the government will need a scapegoat, and fast. I think we know who that will be.
My question is: where do you plan to hide, what psueodonym will you adopt, and will you be travelling in company with Al Gore?
Don't worry, we won't tell them. This is just between you and us.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Information Superhighway
Cyberspace
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
rooooar
Is the IP address shortage a real technical problem or is it simply a managment issue thats hiding under the excuse that "routers can't cope with large route tables" combined with our current routing infastructure?
In the future, so you see the Internet envolving in a evolutionary fashion, or are revolutionary changes in store?
One the one hand, you're well-respected in technical circles for your engineer efforts in the early days of the internet, and generally thought of as a correct and forward-thinking person. On the other hand, you were employed for most of recent history (perhaps still?) by MCI/WorldCom, who've been accused of being shortsighted in many ways, and not very true to the spirit of the net. How do you reconcile these things? Do you have any say or sway?
11*43+456^2
In ten years, do you think that the average person's use of the Internet will be similar to today, or will it be drastically different?
We've heard the hype and the 'plans' to move to IPv6 for years now, but the USA seems fairly complacent at IPv4. Do you see IPv6 becoming a reality in the near future (2 to 3 years), and from a high perspective, what do you think (besides the obvious running out of addresses) could spur the movement? Or should we not move at all, and depend on network address translation more?
"Powers. I have them."
How do you feel about the fact that many people think of the World Wide Web and the Internet as the same thing?
Email, FTP and even chat protocols seem to be more and more mediated by an HTTP interface. Is this just the price of making the 'Net available to more people, or do you think there is a chance for a non WWW or WWW-workalike to get significant public use?
All's true that is mistrusted
What progress is being made in architecting security in the Internet in regards to protocol 'attacks' and global traffic shaping?
Any comments on the Whitehouse Cybersecurity proposal released last week?
There are a lot of efforts related to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). How do you see them going? Will SIP rule the roost? Is the wireline "plain old telephone service" phone going to be obsolete any time soon, at home, at work, or both? Will VoIP look like part of the Internet to the consumer, or will it be part of the obscure infrastructure?
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
Do you feel used by the management team of WorldCom? Do you feel that bold, crowd-pleasing projections like this helped blow up a big tech bubble and bamboozle the gullible, non-tech-educated public? Are scientists just puppets of the businessmen, or do scientists have some obligation to avoid aligning themselves with fraudulent enterprises? Can scientists do anything to avoid having their inventions turned into tools for fraud?
Al (and Clinton) shoveled massive amounts of federal dollars into producing the Internet. If not for their strong pushing of spreading the Internet all over (starting in educational institutions), we wouldn't be anywhere near where we are today.
Yes, Al misspoke. But he was also crucial to the Internet being what it is today, so he gets some points.
May we never see th
What's up with that WorldCom thing? Did you personally get burned by any of this? Are you ashamed to have worked for those people? Do you think it has it damaged the credibility of the Internet?
And in your opinion, what is it about ICANN that causes people to hate it so vehemently? Is it justified?
The internet has brought many people together to do anything from games to clubs. But one of the largest unities brought together was the Open Source movement. Did you ever fathom the idea that developers around the world would unite to share source code and develop major applications (ie - linux) that is free for all?
What are your views of the Open Source Movement?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
How do you feel about the internet going from a place of knowledge, beauty, and limitless potential to a place of Porn, Scams, and Cons? Geez, often times you can get all 3 at one site. I would think this polution of your idea to such an extent leaves a bad taste in your mouth, I know it does mine.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
Do you believe that a transport mechanism of the future could be alternating electrical or light waves? The implication of using this technique eliminates the threshold barrier for faster than the speed of light transmission. The quantum state of the wave function remains constant between the source and destination, so at the exact moment that the wave function is changed at the source, the destination also has the same wave function.
= ns99992796> The NewScientist Article is here for one aspect of the experiment.</a>
Currently, there is some experimentation in this field, but it involves relatively short distances. <a href=http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id
What do you believe the implications of this type of experimentation hold for the future of networking? Will computers be able to share common information instantaneously?
Just out of curiosity, what operating system do you use, and which OS do you think is going to rule the market in decades to come?
Someone please mod parent up. I want to see VC's answer to this.
How do you take that the system you helped develop for the FREE exchange of information has been targeted by corporate america to be used as nothing more than another invasive marketing tool.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Now, some software firms, primarily under the banner of "fighting piracy" are looking again to the pay-to-play model and trying to implement this sort of system, most notably in the .NET framework. While the initial outlay for users may be much smaller (since software packages don't need to be purchased in bulk up-front), the long-term strategy is to bring in more money to the software creator.
However, personal computers are too powerful and there are too many people interested in having software which works locally -- obtained by paying a one-time fee or nothing at all -- that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to force people and companies back into the old model.
The Internet is another matter. Computer systems used to run exclusively locally. Thanks to the work by you and your peers, where it used to be near-impossible to hook up a couple VAXes together, it became possible to link more and more computers together into the Net we have today.
Political and corporate forces are attempting to divide and control this behemoth. While the first round of attempts in the form of the dot-bomb craze failed spectacularly in commercialising and segmenting the Net, a new wave is having much more success. The Great Firewall of China and damnable legislation is cutting access. Further attempts to force hardware manufacturers to make controls available continue.
Unlike software, which has been commoditised, carrier and connection are services which cross state and national borders. Furthermore, where there are few barriers to entry in the software field, a common carrier requires incredible up-front infrastructure. Hence, there are few major carriers, all of which are regulated by both domestic and foreign governments.
It is therefore rather unlikely, even with some clever hacks such as Triangle Boy, that a return to closed loops and segments is unavoidable if the proponents are prepared to work at it, which they seemingly are.
What do you think about these developments? If your feeling is that they are anathema to the purpose of the Net (which was initially a defensive weapon and never meant to be what it has become), do you see any solutions beyond lobbying of Congressmen, which won't happen for the simple reason that the users are too dispersed as compared to those organised and deep-pocketed who would strongly control the Net?
woof.
We seem to have a world of internet have and have nots.
The biggest set of have nots are still those who have not in respect of anything (the third world). We have the 'ring of fire' around Africa, but that's only really useful for the countries with a shoreline. Do you think your efforts for intra-planet internet-working would help to provide better satellite based access for making ISP's cheaper.
Is the internet's biggest need right now adding a couple of interplanetary satellites to the net (very glamorous of course) or making it more secure, decreasing abuse (i.e. spam), and increasing access to high-speed connections? I'd say people's time, $, and energy would be better spent on less flashy but far more useful endeavors such as those.
Sounds like Mr. Cerf has reached the dabbling stage of his career.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
"A Google Search for "Vint Cerf" brings up thousands of responses"
:)
A Google search for anything brings up thousands of responses
-Mx
As more and more crimes become committed on the internet, what is your take on how it should be policed?
Should the law of the country where the servers are held be applied, or the law of the country of the guilty party?
Who should be the police?
Dr. Cerf,
First of all, thank you---From all of us.
I've got a million questions i'd like to ask you, but... I'll limit myself to just one.
My question to you is, having witnessed what the internet has evolved into over the years, do you feel that network perversion (i.e. "perversion" as in misuse...not sexual or moral perversion) is an inevitable consequence of networking in general?
Bowie J. Poag
It has been said (by Lessig and others) that architecture IS policy. With that in mind, how would you (re-)architect a global network today to shape the world in a better way?
Dear Dr. Cerf,
When I first heard of the WorldCom troubles
and the subsequent bankruptcy, my first thoughts
were of you and what impact this would have on you at WorldCom. Has your division been affected? Do you still enjoy your role at WorldCom?
Regards,
Jason, KY
I would like to see this answered... please mod this up.
Justen Stepka
I would like to get a progress report on how your wife Sigrid's cochlear implants are working.
Do you believe in open standards? If so, Do you support efforts (like those in the Linux community) to freely educate people and make knowledge freely available to those who wish to learn?
Now that computer networks have become an indispensible part of the humna society, what do think would the state of these networks be in the next ten years. Eg. Would the networks become more intelligent, will everyone have 24 hrs a day connection?
reSisTanCe iS fUtILe
TCP/IP was invented as a way of connecting disparate networks together. It has succeeded in this goal quite admirably.
XML has a similar goal. It has been used to connecting companies together who have different internal processes.
With web services and the explosion of XML based standards, what thoughts do you have on wether or not XML will succeed? What are its strengths and shortcomings when put along side of TCP/IP?
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
Did you design the Internet for p0rn or mp3s?
Back when the internet (as we now it) was being developed, it was a government military project.
However, after the internet revolution (of the early 90's) freed it from being Arpa-Net, we had a "golden age" where anyone could connect, and anyone with enough technical know-how could run a server and become a permanent part of the system.
But now we see a day looming in the future where large media conglomerates control it all through draconian service agreements that dis-allow private individuals to run servers in their homes, as well as "linking lawsuits", and patents of obvious business methods, all resulting in an internet where the vast majority of the people can only passively view information rather than interactively take part in providing information.
Do you think it's a "good thing" for everyone to run servers (an internet of the people), or do you believe that it's better for the government and corporations to control the flow of information to citizens (an internet for the people).
While it seems an obvious choice, remember that the situation we have now, where the internet is the "wild west" and mailboxes are littered with spam, and internet rumours become accidental news stories, is a direct result of an internet "of the people".
So there are pros and cons either way. Basically the question boils down to "do you prefer the wild west" versus "do you prefer a controlled, moderated internet?"
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
In your bio, it is clearly indicated that you work at WorldCom. As an insider, though, it seems likely you might have a little more info about the whole deal than what the big media conglomerates tell us. What is your opinion of the company, and/or could you shed a little more light on the big scandal involved?
He is also a bigwig at Worldcomm.
Vin Cerf is an A1 scumbag.
(to mods: i thought i posted this, but it doesn't seem to appear. apologies if repost).
on the point of architecture...
a client-server architecture has all of the wonderful benefits of centralisation (backups, maintenance, etc...) but at the cost of redundancy. if you were to have a truly scalable internet - every service delivered in the traditional client-server approach (HTTP, FTP, you name it) should be on some backbone that has at least two lines on separate circuits as well as <insert normal redundancy stuff here>
on the other hand, we've seen the benefits of disitributed processing (SETI, Proteins, etc...) and i believe that big players like IBM and Intel are using the concept of a P2P architecture for disitributing data around the cheap HDD space they have on their network.
now my understanding of the initial concept of "the internet" was that it would provide a redunandt infrastructure such that a nuke couldn't knock out the military communication mechansims entirely.
it seems to me that the current client-server approach doesn't not address this WITHOUT A SUBSTANTIAL COST (data centres all over the world for an SME would be ludicrous).
what are your feelings on a possible middle-ground, or the future of internet architecture considering both cost and redundancy?
Cerf is only pissed that they got caught.
If this were some small Central African hereditary dictatorship, it would be more open and credible. This thing needs fair, open elections FOR ALL SEATS, and totally transparent finances. As it is now, the UN bogocity inspectors should be sent in, or failing that, the F-16s and the Tomahawks!
Mr Cerf:
What has been your experience being on the inside of one of the largest sinking ships in the American fleet this year, that of the Worldcom corporation?
As the Senior Vice President of Internet Architecture and Technology for WorldCom, you no doubt carry a unique perspective when it comes to the accounting practices that were used.
Specifically, I'm interested in knowing if folks "in the know" in Worldcom had any idea this thing might be coming down the pike, or did they fool people even as far up as Sr. VeePees?
Thanks.
The IETF is an amazingly transparent organization that has consistently "delivered the goods" with almost no back-room politics. ICANN is its exact opposite, perhaps reaching a nadir when one of its own board members had to sue to see the financial records. Why doesn't ICANN operate in a completely transparent manner? Do you feel the slightest bit uncomfortable with its policies and procedures? Given your background, Welch's comments in the McCarthy Army hearings come to mind.
Dr. Cerf,
In your 1988 paper with Dr. Robert Kahn An Open Architecture For a Digital Library System and a Plan For Its Development, you describe a mobile agent system called Knowbots.
After 14 years do you still think that Knowbots have a part in the future of digital library systems? If so, how has their potential role changed since you worked on this paper?
Do you think your work would have benefitted from consideration of "Software Patents" or would it have been an incumberance and distraction? Would you have liked to have patents on the Internet so that every node or packet would have to pay royalities? Even if it would have made you (or, more likely, your employer) 'Richer n' Bill'? Lastly, any thoughts on the One-Click-Purchase Patent?
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Hey Cerf
. net?
on working on sending the internet to mars:
Can we call it Terranet?
or better yet, Terra.net?
interstellar.net?
federationstarship
startrek.net?
marsuplink.net?
outernet?
We're like rats, in some experiment! -- George Costanza
1) In terms of bandwidth?
2) In terms of increased costs to the consumer?
And in fact, it seems Al barely even misspoke. Phil Agre put together a good overview of the "Al Gore invented the Internet" story that shows how it can mainly be traced to bad reporting by Wired News. (The reason I never read anything by Declan McCullagh)
Yes he said something along those lines, but through shoddy journalism, it became generally accepted that Al Gore was boasting about being the father of the Internet.
And of course Republican pundits and presidental candidates further distorted the story into proof that Al Gore is a big fat liar. How many votes did they get off that during the election?
So why didn't you dub it the Vinternet?
]
Q for vint cerf:
whatever happened to the Next-Generation Internet or 'Internet2' or the National Grid Computing project. do you believe these will make a significant difference in defining the net for the next 5-7 years (the useful half-life of most net.engineers)?
And, I'm sure you find some issues troubling. I would be interested in your views of SPAM. Did you anticipate it? What do you think about it? And do you have any ideas on how it can be managed or controlled (or, better yet, stopped)?
What, if any, enhanced form of QoS would you have included in TCP/IP?
May we never see th
Well, it's already modded up as far as it will go, but let me also add my two cents to try and make this one of the questions that is given to Vint Cerf. Inquiring minds want to know.
I'm having trouble logging on to the Internet. Should I upgrade to AOL 7.0?
Mr Cerf,
What do you see as the largest promise of improvement of the Internet? Specifically, what would you like the Internet to be in 20 years?
best regards,
Jeppe
Stop the brainwash
The Question: Since internet frist began to press attention one of the features that has been claimed is more handicap access ot internet..
Are you satisified with the progress internet has made towards both hearing and sight imparred access or what progress does Internet still have to make in this area?
I aks this because right now I am involved in two programmign projects that bring new apps to internet and I am dealign with the struggle to understand both these issues..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
So who is most qualified to make this claim, as far as you are concerned?
Dr. Cerf, I'm curious to know about what security plans you're considering for the interplanetary network you propose. It's fairly obvious that there has to be something better than present-day Net security involved, otherwise it would be possible for a garden-variety script kiddie to DoS an entire planet (at least to the extent of cutting off its "upstream" link). And might these security plans offer us some possible ways of dealing with network attacks here on Earth as well?
Be who you are...and be it in style!
Mr Cerf, What drives you? What makes you get up in the morning? Where is your passion?
Vint-
Where would the internet be right now if we didn't have to deal with the untimely passing of Jon Postel?
For those who don't know the man...
http://www.isoc.org/postel/
I remember calling his desk (his desk!) one day to ask him about the creation of an RFC... he was infinitely patient and kind... and it seemed like he was the last voice of reason when it came to domain registration, RFC's and all these other internet related formalities that most of us have to wrangle with everyday.
James Hutter
Surfing the net? Any relationship there? I cannot think of any other water related metaphors related to the internet... is your name responsible?
What advice do you give to the people at Slashdot? Do you agree with the way they moderate discussions? How would you propose they extend the relevance of a discussion from about one hour to at least a day or so?
And...why didn't this get modded up?
Well said; have a virtual mod point on me. Let's see it, mods.
A number of people that I talk to either consider the internet to be something "just for those computer nerd types", or they think it's the ultimate medium from which all things will eventually derive.
My question is how important a place in society is the internet now, and what do you expect its place to be in the future?
What is your favorite meal that your wife cooks?
What is her favorite meal that you cook?
Reciepes?
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
Most people that I run into in the corporate IT world all know/love/use NAT (network address translation). However, as much as NAT conserves IP addresses and provides a measure of inbound-connection security, I've also seen it be the cause many problems because too many sites that have to interconnect are running overlapping IP space. This isn't even counting the number of tools or protocols that have been broken by NAT (even if they're "fixed" in smarter versions of NAT that know layer 3 or 4 protocols; eg traceroute, ftp).
Since the IP protocols were originally built around the idea of unique addresses, I'm wondering if you think NAT has been a beneficial kludge or a curse. Do you think IP should have been had a built-in NAT mechanism allowing for a more protocol-friendly NAT?
Will the (eventual) adoption of the larger address space of IPv6 lead to the elimination of NAT? Should it?
Okay, do you think it's a good idea to shoehorn al this media stuff into the IP(V6) layer, or does an Internet-scale ATM service make more sense? (Ooh, I guess I've telegrahped my druthers here... :-) Anyway, what are your inclinations toward an architecture for information services?
Dr. Cerf,
I'm curious about your views on a couple of 'hot-button' topics. First, spam and spammers: How would you choose to deal with the problems created by both, assuming you were in a position to dictate such policy?
Second, building on the first question: One of the positions taken by, apparently, many SysAdmins (myself included) is that the ability to send E-mail is a privilege, not a right (just like driving), and that said privilege is revocable on a per-network basis by the specific system's administrator(s) at any time, and for any reason, primarily because the vast majority of hosts that make up the Internet are privately owned and operated.
What is your take on this position? Valid? Invalid? Somewhere in between? Do you see the sending of E-mail being legislated into a "right" in times to come? (My belief is that, if this happens, the 'net will drown in spam in short order as blocklists become outlawed).
Thanks much.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
That's a little bit more confrontational than necessary. Perhaps if we were to ask in more civil terms we might get a reasonable response? Perhaps something like this.
ICANN is seen from the outside as a self-serving and counterproductive entity. Given your support of it, I assume you disagree. Can you give us some reasons to see differently? Perhaps explain why ICANN has such a bad public image, and why the public is wrong on these things. Why has the increasingly unanimous need for reform been ignored? How can the public come to trust ICANN if ICANN won't trust the public with information about their business?
Science may someday discover what faith has always known.
"information superhighway" = anagram("a rough whimper of insanity")
--
If you moderate this, then your children will be next.
Dr.Cerff would you like to see an expansion of community-run wireless networks and a concommitant addition of bandwidth to the soon-to-be-crowded 2.4 and 5 GHz "free" bandwidths? (This all assumes that you're not happy with how the internet has become dominated by monopolistic cable companies)
What do you believe is going to happen to all the dark fiber that has been installed by Worldcom and others? It seems clear at this point that fiber networks have been grossly overbuilt, and demand for much, if not most, of this fiber is not about to materialize, at least within the context of current applications and cost structure. In your opinion, does this situation represent a massive loss of investment, or a tremendous opportunity to sell innovative new services, e.g. intercity video teleconferencing links which are cost-competitive with voice-only conferences?
Are innovations that could take advantage of this fiber likely to be stifled as a result of the current dependence of the telecom industry on high bandwidth charges? If this were a pure supply-and-demand situation, one might expect the cost to access dark fiber to sink like a rock until people were willing to pay for it, allowing small, entrepreneurial companies to begin to offer speculative new services. Does all that fiber remain dark only because the small number of fiber owners are unwilling to allow such price declines to happen?
After all the noise slashdot made about ICANN policies and such, this would seem like a good time to ask ICANN's chairman about it..
you led the engineering of MCI Mail, the first commercial email service to be connected to the Internet.
On a related note...
Spam is growing out of control and many
administrators now consider SMTP/email to
be broken by design.
Did the problem of unsolicited email, forged
addresses and falsified mail headers ever occur
in the early design of SMTP/email?
What was the opinion on internet abuse and
forgery back in the early days?
Do you think there is a possibility to replace
SMTP with a new design?
------------------
You may like my a cappella music
This is exactly what I want to hear Vint's take on. Special interests are in the process of bastardizing crucial parts of the Internet to protect their own business models. Does Vint see an end in sight? Is it something he'd rather not think about?
It brought the net to the masses.
It brought pr0n to the masses!
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
slashdot/VC: You have been granted 3 questions.
Homer: Did you really invent the Internet?
VC: Yes.
Homer: Really?
VC: Yes.
Homer: Really?
VC: Yes. Thank you, come again.
I was trying to think of a profound way to put it--nothing came to mind. Too bad we couldn't put that in the post ;) Seriously though, we get random geek's takes on this issue all too often...this guy, having created the Internet, would most likely have a very interesting take on the matter.
In my view, using the internet has become needlessly complex and clumsy for the average user.
... is there any reason to think that in the future of the internet, reason will prevail?
Browsers are huge, unweildy, swiss-army beasts that are hard to set up and maintain.
Many if not most web pages are awful.
E-mail is clumsy, increasingly bandwidth-wasting, overly complex.
I could go on but
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
I keep running into the concept that some technological revolutions were 'inevitable'. Per this theory, SOMEONE would have invented the cotton gin, even if Eli Whitney had died young. But then I look at Tesla and alternating current and I truly wonder if anyone else on the planet could have done what he did.
I'm curious as to whether or not you think the Internet, or something like it, was inevitable? What were the crucial success points? Were there individual places where, without someone being truly and irreplaceably brilliant, the Internet would not have come to be?
For gods' sake, why ASN.1? It's the single biggest source of implementation and security heartaches for SNMP out there.
Wrong analogy, who knows the architect of the Ronald Reagan Federal Building, Ronald Reagan National Airport or Cape Kennedy launch site?
The person who commissions a project is far more likely to get recognition than anyone else, even if they use someone else's money.
Gore was asked what contribution he had made as a politician he gave a completely truthful answer. The Republican party deliberately distored that answer.
The same liars want to start a war and their argument is that we have to trust them. Unfortunately we simply cannot trust them because they have lied to us on the effect of their tax cut on the budget deficit, lied to us on nuclear wast storage in Nevada and lied to us about the case for war:
"I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied -- finally denied access [in 1998], a report came out of the Atomic -- the IAEA -- that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I don't know what more evidence we need." George W Bush
Unfortunately that is not what the report says, as you can see for yourself here.
If you are a pathological liar the very best strategy is to go out and brand your opponent a liar.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Dear Mr. Cerf
:P
Recently, when reading you're opinions it seems as though you've basically taken the opposite tack that people like Mr. Postel did when it comes to things like the internet domain name system. For example, you seem to support ICANN despite the fact that that it's basically made itself unaccountable, and, well, sucks in general. You also seem to support the Intellectual property industry in their attempts to control the Internet and computing devices in general.
My question to you is: Do you see any value in the internet as a communications medium that gives everyone a voice, without censorship, or do you feel that such a system is to harmful in its current state? Should the Internet be controlled by a small elite and by earth's mega corporations?
Also, I'd like to hear a good defense of ICANN, if that's possible.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Dr. Cerf, What is the most life changing technology that has influenced your life. Thank you
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
How do you feel about internet censorship in places like China, and Saudi Arabia? Recently the Chinese government began knocking (for a short time) people off the internet who did google searches for politically sensitive terms. Do you feel this is morally wrong? Do you think that it has any chance of succeeding?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
We already know what the future of IP will be, IPv6. Already deployed widely in Asia, and available in the Linux kernel, etc.
If you have some specific arguments as to why IPv6 doesn't solve the problems you seem to exist, maybe you should bring those up, rather then making sweeping, yet meaningless, metaphors about wheels with holes in them.
Also, IP is NOT Broadcast at all. It's packet switched. Geez.
(Please, someone mod this down)
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
What do you think about the current situation on the internet, with users down the bottom and servers up the top? Do you think that the internet should be without a heirarchy so anyone can run a server with high bandwidth?
inspired this line:
"Only exhibitionists live in glass houses."
When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? How has that vision for your own future impacted your present?
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
Mr. Cerf,
:)
/. my favorite . )
It seems like a short time since everything started out at CERN - did things evolve as your expected? And how du your think the future of the digital age / internet will evolve ?
Very hypothetical and yet so breathtaking
--
El_Jake (
In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
Or a better scheme. Mixing node addresses with network addresses makes for some amusing and clever binary math, but also makes it difficult to efficiently with addresses.
Since much of the node space is "lost" in trying to save subnets, I hate to say it, but I kind of like the idea of splitting network and node into seperate components, ala IPX. Even if you went with the size of IPX addresses (32 bits address, 48 bits node) we'd have far fewer addressing problems than we do now, and everybody would have a lot more addresses at their disposal. DSL users that get a single IP now would effectively have an entire 48 bit network at their disposal; businesses that get an entire class C could effective have a class B address (254) with a node count of 254 * 2 ^ 48, I'd wager higher than the internet as a whole.
A new concept of "flexible node routing" could be introduced to allow for routers to actually route on node addresses for places that were assigned a network number but would like to internally divide their node numbers into a network:node component internally.
Part of the problem with IP now is not the limit of IP addresses, but the limit of 253 nodes per subnet. With modern switches, there's little reason *not* to run 500-1000 nodes per subnet. Its less hassle and makes for simpler and more flexible topologies, not to mention faster and less expensive connections between cores and leaf nets.
Oh well, the simple solution would have been to just have tagged an extra 8 or 16 bits and made an IP address a little longer.
I am sure that you, like most of the rest of us, have seen the effects, both good and bad, that the internet has had upon the world.
With this in mind, especially given all of the issues surrounding p2p filesharing and intellectual property rights - if you were given the chance to do it again, knowing what you now know, would you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
The UUCP network was a mesh in its early days and evolved to be much more tree-like in the last years before its demise because of the emergence of a major provider of services. The Internet was originally intended to be mesh-like for robustness, but the emergence of a few major backbone providers seems to be making it more tree-like as well. Would you comment on mesh vs. tree for robust networks?
better is the enemy of good
You and Kahn were doing your early work on TCP in the same years that the first workstations (at Xerox Parc, for example) were being developed. I'd like to know, if you can remember, when you first began to appreciate the magnitude of this change in the internet user base, and whether this change had any affect on your TCP/IP design work in the late 70s.
It's terribly tempting for one of these interviews to submit a really ridiculous question. Something like:
... is the story I heard about you, the french maid and the llama true?
So
Dr. Cerf, you're working towards a workable first cut at an Interplanetary Net for 2008. I understand that distances involved prevent the use of a TCP-like protocol, with store and forward being a more feasible approach.
What kind of routing and host naming challenges will exist in the IPN as you currently envision it and what sorts of approaches will be used to address these challenges?
Will packets themselves become intelligent self-routing containers? Will domain naming be heirarchical (and merely a superset of existing DNS to include extra-terrestrial TLDs)? Will it be feasible to dynamically update routing tables?
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
Dear Vint Cert
The current American telecom infrastructure is a two meter width trunk tree with ten leaves to support it. The telecommunication companies have buried large amounts of fiber optic cable for metropolitan, Interstate, and international links all over the lands and less than ten percent is in use because there is no need by the people who own the fiber.
I think we can agree that all telecommunication carriers are monopolies. Instead of having one monopoly like there was with AT&T, there are now a dozen or more monopolies who own their own cable within their own areas. Whoever owns the line is the only one who can provide service.
It is impossible to have any sort of service competition to individual customers when any one entity owns the communication circuit to and from your home. Wireless is a hope, but the limited spectral frequency range as allocated by the FCC makes even the air a monopolized medium.
I have been on both sides of the wire and I am a very frustrated individual. I have worked for the ILEC, the CLEC, the ISP, and I am a telecom customer. The inability to get the service that I want is maddening. The inability to deliver service that my customers want is disappointing and putting my company out of business.
How do we fix this problem? I do not care how much it costs. I do not care how long it will take. It needs to get done and we need to get working on this now.
When I say telecom I mean voice, data, television, everything -- it does not matter any more.
Thank you
The forces of change include the movie and music industries, regulators, legislators, monopoly software companies, security, terrorism, privacy, tax, the high tech market crash, etc.
It seems that change is inevitable and the internet as we know it will be gone soon.
How do you feel about this? Are there any changes that should be resisted? Are there any changes that you see as being necessary? Are there changes we should all get behind and push?
Finally, what's the best way to move the internet in the direction we want?
Thanks
Dear Mr. Cerf,
Do you have one or two favorite technical or non-technical books that in some manner changed your day to day thinking; influenced your values, or in some way played a significant role in forming who you are today?
Thank you
Dr. Cerf,
;-)
1. According to your bio, you like science fiction. How much did sci-fi books/movies influence your career choices? Which particular book/movie did you like the most / had the most influence on you?
2. For a 'net link between here and Mars to exist, we would first need some kind of human presence there. How soon do you see this happening? As far as I know from popular press, we are still MANY MANY years away from such a goal. Do you have some inside info that we don't?
Dr. Cerf: I think it can be argued that there might not be as much of an IPv4 address space 'crunch' today if it weren't for large allocations and wastefull allocations (US Govt, etc. plus the /8's). How do you feel about the large multicast allocation (224.0.0.0/4) and no 'killer' multicast apps, plus with the DotCom fallout? Thanks!
would be that he found some good people to take the roll of icann instead of the current bunch of jokers...
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
and yes, i know he's the chairman, however that doesn't mean he might not like the way the organization works.
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
Real question:
- Why did it take a court case to force ICANN ( a PUBLIC body ) to disclose documents to one of its own directors ? What has ICANN done with OUR money that it is trying to hide ?
What I'd really like to ask:
- Are ICANN dishonest or merely incompetent in the extreme ?
Having read about the recent demonstration of Bluetooth and IPv6 by Mike Foley, I was truly amazed. If this is the next step in component communication and networking, what will then be the step after that? When our objects and ourselves are networked so quickly and simply, in what do you foresee the next big innovation for the field? Thank you for your time.
Zech Harvey, MCSE, MCDBA, CCNA
Why should registering a fully qualifide domain name be considered any different legally, than registering a vanity license plate? If I, for example, had the name TRUMP on my license plate and Donald Trump tried to take me to court so he could use that name on his plate, the courts would laugh him out of the building. What is the difference between the electronic highway and one made of concrete?
I have a few questions regarding the size of the MCI network, and its portion of the internet.
1) What would you say is the larget portion of internet traffic that flowed through MCI's network? When?
2) Did that influence your choice to go to work for MCI?
3) A few years ago, I heard an anecdotal report of an unusually large number of suicides in the MCI network support group - so many that management had to say something. Had you heard of this problem?
4) And lastly, what do you think of the current state of fault-tolerance of the internet in whole; and, MCI's part?
Thank you for the opportunity to ask these questions.
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
im unemployed unix sys admin/ee to be. disabled ears like yours. hire me. (wink)
How will Grid Computing affect the growth and topology of the internet and the way people use computers in the future.