Slashdot Mirror
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."
Well... Duh!
I just assumed everyone ~knew~ we'd be using UDP between planets...
Sheesh... do I have to send a memo about ~everything???
Agile Artisans
Join moola.com, play games to earn money.
To quote a site that bothers to keep the quote around for Google's sake: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.
Vent Cerf = 1
AC = 0
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.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Even if CS came up with a scientific solution to improve code quality, it would be an interesting exercise to see if the industry will be willing to absorb the costs associated with such a solution. Especially in an environment where end customers are well-trained to accept and deal with software quality issues.
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).
Note the key phrase "one of" in the story.
I actually attended this lecture yesterday and Vinton disclaimed the "father of the internet" moniker, saying that he co-designed the original TCP/IP protocol but that he and Bob Kahn and that that work was largely based on the ARPANET design which was in turn based on packet radio, etc. So yes, the man himself said he was just one of a long list contributors.
He did joke though that his son once asked if he was the "brother of the Internet".
He also commented that one of the properties of the system that he was quite happy with was the ease with which others could contribute at any level of the system, including building new application layer protocols on top of the basic protocols without going and needing to go and get permission from someone. People can just go out and write new protocols and build the apps to use them. (e.g. Bit Torrent) He said he thought that the Internet is largely where it is today because of that openness to the contributions of thousands of people.
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.
I think people generally don't understand what computer science is. CS isn't a 4 year degree to learn how to program or set up a network. It's about having the theoretical background to be able to analyze and evaluate comptuter technologies. Classes like automata theory and theoretical data structure classes are necessary to be able to both 1) apply a real solution to a problem and 2) be able to argue the validity of that solution. There is a lot of science in CS.
You can't transfer information over entangled particles. Furthermore, faster than light information transfer violates relativity.
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.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
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%
Two excerpts: