Vint Cerf on Internet Challenges

chamilto0516 writes "Phil Windley, a nationally recognized expert in using information technology, drove up to the Univ. of Utah recently hear this years Organick Lecture by Vint Cerf, one of the inventors of the Internet. In his notes, Vint talks about, 'Where is the Science in CS?' He also goes on to talk about real potential trouble spots with the Internet, but there is a bit on Interplanetary Internet (IPN). Apparently, the flow control mechanism of TCP doesn't work well when the latency goes to 40 minutes."

Comments

One of my favorite kernel comments....

[Beolach]

/*
* [...] Note that 120 sec is defined in the protocol as the maximum
* possible RTT. I guess we'll have to use something other than TCP
* to talk to the University of Mars.
* PAWS allows us longer timeouts and large windows, so once implemented
* ftp to mars will work nicely.
*/

(from /usr/src/linux/net/inet/tcp.c, concerning RTT [retransmission timeout])

Re:let's get two out of the way

[ajs]

Sigh.... again the Al Gore thing, and again it's modded as funny. It's not. It's a failure of our media to shoot down bad politics.

To quote a site that bothers to keep the quote around for Google's sake:

Gore never claimed that he "invented" the Internet, which implies that he engineered the technology. The invention occurred in the seventies and allowed scientists in the Defense Department to communicate with each other. In a March 1999 interview with Wolf Blitzer, Gore said, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

And he did take initiative in creating the Internet. In fact, he pushed funding for it through a congress that was convinced that anything attached to the military (and keep in mind that NSF and DARPA *are* connected to the military) was "the enemy". I heard Gore speak back then, and he was passionate about the creation of a national research network and how important it was.

The Internet is here with us today as much because of the funding as because of the science, and Gore was the money man.

Persoanlly, I find some of his politics a bit extreme, but like or hate liberal politics, you have to admit that the media dropped the ball by not calling Bush on this.

Vint Cerf: Value of the net vs. cost of the net

[G4from128k]

I heard Vint Cerf speak at an e-business conference (remember when those were popular?).

He talked extensively about how the layered architecture of the internet poses a serious challenge to business models. The fact that any application can communicate through any physical medium (of sufficient bandwidth) was great for interoperability, but hard on businesses that provide the physical layer.

The problem is that all of the value is in the application layer -- people want to run software, download movies, chat with friends, etc. Whether the data flows on copper, fiber, or RF is irrelevant to the end-user and the layered architecture ensures that this is irrelevant. In contrast, a lot of the cost is in that "irrelevant" physical layer -- the last mile is still very expensive (we can hope WiMax reduces this problem). This gulf between cost and value forces physical infrastructure providers into a position of being a commodity providers with severe cost competition. If the end-user doesn't care how their data is carried, then they tend to treat bandwidth as a commodity.

I think he was wearing his MCI hat at the time of this talk and was influenced by the beginnings of the dot-com crash. MCI's subsequent bankruptcy was not surprising. Understanding this issue explains why telecom companies don't want municipal wifi and insist that you only network your cellphone through their networks. The only way to make infrastructure pay is to bind the high-value software application layer to the high-cost hardware layer. But this strategy violates the entire layered model and enrages consumers.

Re:Someone correct me if this is wrong

[rewt66]

I believe that TCP requires an acknowledgement that the other end of the link received the packet. So, using your numbers, that would be 1339 * 2 = 2678 seconds, which is 44.63 minutes (40 minutes in round figures).

Re:Latency over lightyears...

[menscher]

Since latency's going to be over lightyears away

Latency is measured in units of time. Lightyears are a measure of distance.

TCP's no good using standard broadcast methods

Huh? If I knew what you meant to say, it'd be easier to show you were wrong...

We need something that'll be as fast as fiber, but will stretch way way longer in distance.

So, like, line-of-sight laser communication?

Current radio's a broadcast. Can't do that, especially with package leakage.

How do you think we're communicating with the Mars rovers now? Or other planetary explorers?

I belive there was some experiments in quantum transmissio of data, in which an electron was split and one half sent to Munich, the other sent to Venice, and transmissions where near-instantaneous.

You can instantaneously determine what the other side received, but no information can be transmitted this way.

I see you have a low user-id, and therefore have learned to get modded up for saying stuff that is nonsensical and wrong. I must admit I'm impressed. I earn all my mod points the hard way.

Re:Latency over lightyears...

[5E-0W2]

You can't transfer information over entangled particles. Furthermore, faster than light information transfer violates relativity.

Re:let's get two out of the way

[Otter]

And he did take initiative in creating the Internet. In fact, he pushed funding for it through a congress that was convinced that anything attached to the military (and keep in mind that NSF and DARPA *are* connected to the military) was "the enemy". I heard Gore speak back then, and he was passionate about the creation of a national research network and how important it was.

Absolutely not. Gore entered Congress in 1977, well after any point that could reasonably be construed as the "creation" of the ARPAnet/Internet. It's true that he never claimed to have "invented the Internet" but what he did say is still completely untrue.

Re:let's get two out of the way

[Brandon Grey]

So who did "invent the Internet"? Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn often get much of the credit (as Cerf did in the above article) for inventing the TCP/IP protocols. The two accepted the 2004 Turing award for that work.

According to Cerf, "The first demonstration of the triple network Internet took place in July 1977". He refers to this event as the "Birth of the Internet". Prior to that, researchers could send messages but had to be very familiar with the underlying technology.

In a September 2000 email, Cerf and Kahn give Al Gore much credit in the development of the Internet: http://www.mintruth.com/wiki/index.php?Al%20Gore%2 0and%20the%20Internet

Two excerpts:

Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote and support its development.

The Vice President deserves credit for his early recognition of the value of high speed computing and communication and for his long-term and consistent articulation of the potential value of the Internet to American citizens and industry and, indeed, to the rest of the world.