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Ask Internet Visionary and Pioneer Vint Cerf

Posted by timothy on from the touch-the-hem-of-his-garment dept.

As co-designer of TCP/IP (along with Robert E. Kahn), and former chairman of ICANN, it is no exaggeration to say that Vint Cerf is certainly one of the fathers of the internet, and is often referred to as simply the father. His lifetime of network engineering accomplishments — meriting, among many other laurels, the Turing Award — leaves little doubt as to why he's now a full-time internet visionary for Google (and formerly with WorldCom) as well as a Google VP. Now, Cerf has graciously agreed to answer Slashdot readers' inquiries about the past and future of this little thing called the Internet, and his role in it thus far. This short call for questions is inadequate to sum up his contributions to engineering the data flows that entangle and enlighten us in 2011, but read through a few of these capsule descriptions to get a sense of them. In accord with the interview guidelines, please try not to lump together unrelated questions. (You may find that your questions are moderated downward if they aren't concise; if you have several distinct questions, simply submit separately as many as you'd like.)

109 comments

  1. Hindsight is 20/20 by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If there was one thing you could go back and change about TCP/IP -- something that is far too entrenched to change now -- what would it be?

    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:Hindsight is 20/20 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Immediately use IPv8 instead of IPv4? (and yes, I know I'm skipping IPv6)

    2. Re:Hindsight is 20/20 by bzipitidoo · · Score: 1

      The maximum allowed packet size.

      At least, that's what I would guess. But there are other things, just look at the differences between IPv4 and IPv6. Of course, allow more than 2^32 IP addresses. Also, the way subnets are organized (/8, /16, /24) is very handy, but did waste huge amounts of address space. IPv6 could easily run short of address space if we're careless with the bits. 128 bits is not much if they're parceled out in ways similar to IPv4.

      --
      Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
    3. Re:Hindsight is 20/20 by Hatta · · Score: 4, Informative

      IPv6 could easily run short of address space if we're careless with the bits. 128 bits is not much if they're parceled out in ways similar to IPv4.

      Nonsense. IPv6 provides enough addresses that each person on earth could have their own IPv4 internet, which would only account for only about .000000000000000005% of the available addresses.

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    4. Re:Hindsight is 20/20 by jandrese · · Score: 1

      IPv6 Addresses are handed out in /64 blocks, or /48s if you have a big enterprise. We aren't going to exhaust the IPv6 address space without some sort of router that can talk with infinite parallel universes or something.

      --

      I read the internet for the articles.
    5. Re:Hindsight is 20/20 by kasperd · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If there was one thing you could go back and change about TCP/IP -- something that is far too entrenched to change now -- what would it be?

      I think Vint Cerf has already on multiple occasions mentioned the two things he would have liked to have done differently when designing IPv4 and TCPv4. The two things were the size of the addresses and mobility support. At the time there was discussion about the size of the addresses, some people wanted 32 bits, some people wanted 64 bits (and AFAIR some people wanted variable size). Vint was responsible for ending the discussion and deciding on 32 bits. He has publicly admitted that turned out to be an unfortunate decision.

      If IPv4 had been designed with 64 bit addresses, chances are we would never have gotten IPv6 with the additional improvements it offers.

      Vint Cerf has explained that leaving out mobility from IPv4 was due to it being considered appropriate for a lower level in the stack. And to some extent mobility can be handled by WIFI or cell phone networks. But it turned out that in some cases that isn't sufficient, and mobility at a higher level in the protocol stack would have been better.

      I don't think there is anything wrong with the question, but I think that apart from the above two points, what answers you will get is mostly what got changed between IPv4 and IPv6 anyway. Maybe he would also have wanted something designed differently in TCP to begin with (such as knowledge of mobility). The upgrade from IPv4 to IPv6 didn't really change TCP, so TCP still does carry around some stuff that could have benefited from a redesign.

      I seem to recall that Vint Cerf also at some point pointed out authenticity as a point that would have been a good idea to have in the protocol from the start. However at the time when IPv4 was designed public key cryptography was still too young to be properly understood, and any authenticity put into the protocol at the time would likely have turned out to be flawed.

      Considering how much I can write from recollection of what Vint Cerf has said about that question in the past, maybe it is worthwhile having him repeat it again in his own words.

      But there is another question that I would really like to see answered. It is about the IPv4 to IPv6 transition. If IPv4 had been designed differently to begin with, we might not have had to go through this transition. But you never have the necessary experience to design something right the first time, so that is not really a worthwhile discussion. And I don't think discussing the specific design of IPv4 and IPv6 is really that interesting either. The changes from IPv4 to IPv6 all seem for the better, and with the requirement for larger addresses they couldn't have been made much more compatible anyway, so some transition mechanism would be required.

      My question is: What could have been done differently to ease the transition. In other words, if you could go back to the point where the design of the IPv6 protocol as it looks today was available, how would you have designed the transition plan? We all know that there was a transition plan, and nobody executed it fast enough to make it work out. How could the transition mechanisms have been done differently to ensure that the transitioning had happened fast enough to make IPv4 obsolete before the addresses ran out and we had to resort to hacky workarounds like NAT?

      --

      Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
    6. Re:Hindsight is 20/20 by Bucky24 · · Score: 1

      Obligatory xkcd
      http://xkcd.com/865/

      --
      All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
    7. Re:Hindsight is 20/20 by bzipitidoo · · Score: 1

      It's not just the blocks for organizations, it's also the addresses reserved for special purposes. IPv4 also uses a few of what could be called "8/". That is, as I'm sure most everyone knows, many addresses ending with .00 were reserved to indicate the whole subnet. Addresses ending in .255 are for broadcasting. Class C networks don't have 256 addresses, they have 254. Also spoils the purity of the address space. Can't make the blanket statement that any set of 4 bytes always represents what should appear to be 1 host.

      We won't run out of IPv6 addresses unless we're stupid. But as the saying goes, human stupidity is infinite. I can see some people thinking that a way to make their mark on the history of networking is to reserve some kinds of addresses, maybe a "/32/" if you will, for some special, worthy purpose. Then that "/32/" is further divided for even more specialized purposes. Keep that up, and although the IPv6 address space as a whole will not come close to ever filling up, certain kinds of addresses could indeed become scarce. Suppose for example that instead of .xxx names, hosters of pr0n informally reserve their own block with suggestive combinations of hexademical digits, then divide and subdivide that up into kinds of pr0n.

      In short, handle "/x/" with great care.

      --
      Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
    8. Re:Hindsight is 20/20 by kevmeister · · Score: 1

      All this discussion seem to prove is that people don't handle really big numbers well.

      Allocations are, for a variety of reasons, assigned such that a subnet is almost always a /64. So the reality is that there are NOT 2**128 addresses. There are really 2**64 ne5works which will always be overwhelmingly sparsely populated. This is not waste. 2**64 is 18*10**18 or (using American terms for big numbers) 18 quintillion or 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 networks.

      A /32 is in incredibly tiny bit of this space.

      Yes, I'm sure that, with really, really bad allocation policy we could manage to screw things up, but it would take a major effort. And at this time only an eighth of the space is even available with the other seven eighths reserved to be handled differently if we learn that we have made mistakes to that point. 18 quintillion is a really big number...so big people can't really grasp it. After all, people worry about a 14 trillion dollar deficit and really can't conceptualize that number. 18 quintillion is in a whole category form such tiny numbers.

      --
      Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer, Retired
    9. Re:Hindsight is 20/20 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Has that recently changed? again?

      AFAIK IPv6 adresses are handed out in /48 blocks to EVERYONE, including grandma with her laptop on a cable connection.

  2. Great expectations by suso · · Score: 3, Informative

    Can you talk about any time when you felt that the direction of Internet development was not going in the way that you hoped it would?

  3. A Simple Pogonological Question by eldavojohn · · Score: 3, Funny

    What level of success does TCP/IP owe to your glorious beard?

    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:A Simple Pogonological Question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What level of success does TCP/IP owe to your glorious beard?

      And a followup question: You were playing Asteroids on MAME in that wikimedia photo, weren't you?

  4. Best and Worst of Communications Protocols? by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm wagering you've studied many communications protocols -- is there any protocols that you feel was terribly designed and implemented? Any modern day elegant/simple/innovative protocols that you've admired?

    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:Best and Worst of Communications Protocols? by vlm · · Score: 1

      I'm wagering you've studied many communications protocols -- is there any protocols that you feel was terribly designed and implemented? Any modern day elegant/simple/innovative protocols that you've admired?

      Extremely closely related to above question, Radia Perlman's Interconnections book, thumbs up or down, whats Vint Cerfs review?

      Anything like Radia's book but a decade newer?

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
  5. Did you know Dennis Ritchie? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

    Anything you can tell us about Dennis Ritchie?

    He was like a hermit... that's why I would like to know more about him.

    And what are you doing for a living?

  6. Have You Ever Met Al Gore ... by eldavojohn · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    ... in the Thunderdome? Or was it more of a Highlander thing?

    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:Have You Ever Met Al Gore ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is that the last one? No Matrix reference? Frankly, I'm disappointed in your eldavojohn. What would eldavojoanna think?

  7. Your view? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "I'll tell you one thing. If we had known that someday politicians and corporations would come out and destroy everything, they'd have stayed in our cubicles and written the internet off as a bad idea!"

    Agree?

  8. What would you like to see developed next? by techmuse · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm curious what technologies you would like to see developed next, or what you think would be most important to develop next. In other words, what do you think researchers should work on now that would be most significant?

    Oh, and thank you for changing my life!

    1. Re:What would you like to see developed next? by riflemann · · Score: 1

      He has recently between doing a lot of work on the interplanetary internet, you will find this is next big thing.

      --
      Sparks:Gadget:Beer Maker
  9. IPV6 by pedestrian+crossing · · Score: 3, Interesting

    In your opinion, what is it going to take to get the Internet switched over to IPV6?

    --
    A house divided against itself cannot stand.
    1. Re:IPV6 by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 1

      Or, better question, why wasn't IPv4 ever designed to be extensible? Are we ever going to learn that upper bounds are problematic if they are hard coded? Things that seem improbable now, are likely to become reality later, from 640K, to Fat16/32 to NTFS's 2 TB boot drive limit to 3.64TB Ram to ... the impending doom of Unix epoch time in 25 years (or so).

      Yet, we always seem to route around those issues, often with difficulty, when they arise. But wouldn't it be easier to have the solution to running into upper bounds built into the spec before we implement it in the first place?

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    2. Re:IPV6 by slimjim8094 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Engineering for an unpredictable future just means you waste a huge amount of time and often it means your idea won't get off the ground at all. The internet wasn't ever expected to get as big as it is, because it was essentially a research network. Perhaps analogously, our phone numbering system isn't designed to allow direct-dialing nearby galaxies.

      2^32 was - and is - a huge number. 4 billion addresses was unthinkably high, when there were only a few thousand machines who could even use one. It was more than sufficient until a majority of the world needed their own address, or several.

      And it wasn't an arbitrary number, either. It's 32 bits, or 4 bytes. Hardware at the time couldn't easily handle addresses larger than that, so if we'd started out with 128-bit addresses, nobody would ever use it because it would be impossible to implement, or far too slow. Hardware has gotten faster/cheaper/better and now it's no longer an issue. So now we're doing it.

      --
      I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
    3. Re:IPV6 by vlm · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Or, better question, why wasn't IPv4 ever designed to be extensible? Are we ever going to learn that upper bounds are problematic if they are hard coded? Things that seem improbable now, are likely to become reality later, from 640K, to Fat16/32 to NTFS's 2 TB boot drive limit to 3.64TB Ram to ... the impending doom of Unix epoch time in 25 years (or so). ... But wouldn't it be easier to have the solution to running into upper bounds built into the spec before we implement it in the first place?

      Awesome. "Mr Vint Cerf my question to you is, are you aware of any routing protocols implemented using floating point endpoint addressing, and if so how are rounding errors dealt with?"

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    4. Re:IPV6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are we ever going to learn that upper bounds are problematic if they are hard coded

      It's a legitimate question. The common answer is that when the protocol was designed, the hardware was slower and more expensive. It's also easier to maintain software for something that's hard coded. Bear in mind when I saw "software" I mean assembly or circuit layouts. A lot of these things are being pushed through in real-time. Anyway, that's the excuse. Is it a valid excuse? That's the real question.

    5. Re:IPV6 by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 1

      THAT is not my question. And unpredictable my ass, it was huge at the time, but should have been easily seen. Hell, we make fun of 640K ought to be enough for anyone mythos, so why not 32 bits ought to be enough for anyone.

      And unlike the "floating point" comment below, this isn't a floating point problem either. It is "wow, 32 bits is huge, but how do we manage going to 64 bits later? And 128 Bits after that?" Having a rough idea would have given time to figure out the larger problems, and provide transition information when the time comes.

      This would also take into account that processing power is likely to be able to handle the increase in addressing will be available by the time we need it.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    6. Re:IPV6 by TeknoHog · · Score: 1

      It's hard to avoid hardcoded limits when you're working at a sufficiently low level. With networking, you'll probably want to do as much as possible in hardware to keep things fast, but that also means less flexibility. For example, IPv6 header size is fixed for these reasons. While I don't have any low-level network coding experience myself, I've developed FPGA accelerators for other applications, and I've come to appreciate the efficiency of fixed-size data structures. The more flexibility you want, the less it makes sense to have dedicated hardware instead of software.

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    7. Re:IPV6 by l_bratch · · Score: 1

      I believe Vint Cerf's answer to this is that 32-bit or 128-bit were both options, so he pressed ahead with 32-bit for the sake of the experiment with the intention of changing things for the "final" version of TCP/IP, but TCP/IP just slipped into usage in its experimental form and it became too late!

    8. Re:IPV6 by slimjim8094 · · Score: 2

      You're missing the point.

      Perhaps analogously, our phone numbering system isn't designed to allow direct-dialing nearby galaxies

      "It should have been easily seen" is a hindsight argument. Were you there? Did you see it coming? Can you provide a compelling case that they had any suspicion that everybody and their dog in the middle of Africa would need an IP? You couldn't even fit a computer on an average desktop, let alone your pocket.

      You also neglect the added hardship of managing the extra bits. Keeping with the analogy, imagine a 25 digit phone number - it's 'easy to see' that we might need one some day, if intergalactic telephony takes off and we merge our phone system with the phone systems of a few alien species. Should we have done this back in the 60s when direct-dial came around, because it'll be a hassle to change when it's a problem?

      --
      I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
    9. Re:IPV6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I agree with what you're saying, but unfortunately your phone number analogy doesn't work since phone numbers are extensible. Simply dial "000" plus the galaxy code of the galaxy you wish to contact.

    10. Re:IPV6 by hackertourist · · Score: 1

      Don't be ridiculous. Having variable-length addresses != floating-point.

    11. Re:IPV6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Interestingly, the population of the world in 1974 (when Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn proposed TCP/IP) was also ~4 billion. source: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+the+world+in+1974

    12. Re:IPV6 by isorox · · Score: 2

      You also neglect the added hardship of managing the extra bits. Keeping with the analogy, imagine a 25 digit phone number - it's 'easy to see' that we might need one some day, if intergalactic telephony takes off and we merge our phone system with the phone systems of a few alien species. Should we have done this back in the 60s when direct-dial came around, because it'll be a hassle to change when it's a problem?

      No hassle, the direct dial phone system is infinitely flexible.

      From the UK
      I can dial my local takeaway with "654433"
      I can dial my a takeway on the other side of the UK with "01768 654433"
      I can dial a takeaway in Libya by dialing "00 218 21 654 433"

      If we take an unused country code (say 990) for
      I can dial a takeaway on Mars, in the country of "New UK", by dialing "00 990 40 44 1768 654433"
      I can dial a takeaway in Andromeda by dialing "00 990 9 939 483 343 342 459 1768 654433"

      00 (international access code)
      990 (interplanetary access code)
      40 (code for mars)
      44 (code for New UK)
      1768 (code for New Carlisle, in New UK, on Mars)
      654433 (number for takeaway)

      Or
      00 990 (interplanetary)
      9 (code for intergalactic)
      939 (code for andromeda)
      483 343 342 (code for a specific star system in andromeda)
      459 1768 654433 (code for the country, town and phone in that system)

    13. Re:IPV6 by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 1

      "It should have been easily seen" is a hindsight argument.

      No it isn't. Everytime we have hard coded limits in computers, from single bit registers to two digit year codes to whatever it has bit us in the ass in broken systems.

      That isn't to say that we can't make intelligent decisions along the way, and admit that we are far too short sighted far too often.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    14. Re:IPV6 by vtcodger · · Score: 1

      A reasonable question. The problem is that if you leave unused bits in your protocol that can be used to flag extended capabilities, various digital geniuses will use them for all sorts of things. Then, years later, when you need to use them for a real purpose like flagging an extended address field, you will find routers and devices dropping like flies. You'll have analogous problems with any other expansion technique you try to use.

      --
      You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
  10. Interplanetary Internet by immakiku · · Score: 4, Interesting

    TCP/IP started as a military project but has been adapted for all the Internet applications we see today. What sort of applications do you foresee/imagine for the Interplanetary Internet, aside from the stated purpose of coordinating NASA devices?

    1. Re:Interplanetary Internet by Zarhan · · Score: 1

      The Interplanetary Internet has been adapted for more general purposes as DTN (Delay-Tolerant Networks). There are plenty of applications on besides space, such as acoustic networks - you can basically send out bits with sonar pulses. Used a lot in e.g. underwater sensor networks in oceans (monitoring currents and whatnot). They send data to buoys on the surface as sound and the buoys then send it onwards with radio. However, since the power is provided by solar panels, there's only enough power for the transmission during daytime. Long delays for messages en-route.

      Not only for oceans either; In e.g. mine tunnels where cabling is troublesome and wireless signals don't really work, you can send a lot of data by simply banging on the rock hard enough - the bitrate just isn't too great and neither is latency.

  11. Was college worth it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What impact did your college experience have on you? Do you feel it set the foundation for your future or not?

  12. Privacy and the Internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What is you opinion regarding Internet privacy?
    Do you think anything should be changed?

  13. how do we get to 1000Gps in the home? by peter303 · · Score: 2

    Google and the University Internet-2.5 consortium are experimenting with it. Other forward-looking countries have 10x broadband speed at lower cost than US.

  14. Future of the Internet by Yvan256 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Do you think governments and corporations world-wide will be able to kill the Internet as we know it?

    1. Re:Future of the Internet by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

      Do you think governments and corporations world-wide will be able to kill the Internet as we know it?

      This gets at DNS - TCP/IP was supposedly designed to withstand a nuclear attack. DNS can't even survive a court order.

      Do things like P2PDNS and Namecoin have an inevitable future?

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  15. What's next? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Could you see a protocol ever supplanting TCP/IP?

  16. Postel and Crocker by vlm · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So you went to high school with Postel and Crocker according to wikipedia? Did you guys hang out all along or meet up decades later?

    --
    "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
  17. Neutrality by kheldan · · Score: 1

    Where do you stand on the issue of Net Neutrality?

    --
    Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
  18. ARIN ip address exhaustion by vlm · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So you're on the board at ARIN. Anything public you want to say about how ARIN is handling ip address exhaustion other than the "company line"?

    --
    "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
  19. ipv6 NAT by vlm · · Score: 1

    So are you keeping current with IPv6 and if so what is your opinion of IPv6 NAT? Good / evil / other?

    --
    "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
  20. Trends in service provision by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Which area of online service provision should entrepreneurs and market speculators sink their attention into

  21. Future of the Internet by H0bb3z · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My question: Do you feel the security concerns over collected information will trump the leveraging of information in future Internet technologies? Will there be a separate "opt-in" or "opt-out" web to cater to each preference?

    Context: There have been many controversies recently regarding the collection of data and the privacy of individual information. As we move forward, I've heard a mixed set of messages regarding the direction we should expect to see.

    Consumerism is indeed driving innovation and everything is going mobile these days (there's an app for that I think). One example I heard recently of the benefit of the convergence of information and mobility: a consumer can point their mobile phone at a shelf of groceries, get an active "overlay" of information regarding the products and determine which best suits the customer needs. On the flip side, sensors that track customer behavior are installed at the grocery shelf and based on detected behavior (like stopping for a moment to reminisce about Coco-Puffs even though you know they are bad for you) initiates a coupon for whatever the vendor may feel would provide enough motivation to purchase their product -- in the example a $1 off coupon to the mobile phone of a shopper.

    Will this become reality in the future? I think there are benefits to be had, but also am fiercely protective of my personal information and preferences.

    --
    "There *IS* no patch for stupidity" -www.sqlsecurity.com
  22. SMTP, DNS, US Customs by molo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It seems that it is getting more and more difficult to successfully run your own SMTP server. See, for example, this post responding to the idea that a user was going to move off gmail to their own server. Are there any prospects for meaningful SMTP reform that would lower the barrier to entry for legitimate emailers?

    DNS has been often criticized as a centralized single point of failure / censorship. Have you been following the development of namecoin and P2P DNS? Are these systems viable in your estimation? How would you improve them or encourage their adoption?

    The US Customs department recently created headlines in seizing domains. These seizures appear to be extra-legal (not founded in law), but ICANN has gone along with them. Are those fair statements? Should ICANN's trustworthiness be suspect as a result of this process?

    Thanks and cheers.
    -molo

    --
    Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
    1. Re:SMTP, DNS, US Customs by vlm · · Score: 1

      It seems that it is getting more and more difficult to successfully run your own SMTP server. See, for example, this post responding to the idea that a user was going to move off gmail to their own server.

      Note that due to spammers running an outbound is indeed a freaking nightmare. Inbound is a breeze. Just smarthost your outgoing thru your local ISP's relay. Its not that hard.

      I like running my own inbound, because I have fetchmail all tuned up to funnel multiple pop/imap/whatever accounts into my "real" account. Also they all get the same spamassassin treatment, etc.

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    2. Re:SMTP, DNS, US Customs by molo · · Score: 1

      There are a few problems with using your ISP as your outbound relay: You are now dependent on their SMTP and DNS service. Both for performance and availability. Part of the appeal of running your own SMTP server is that you can operate independently.

      For inbound, port 25 has to be unblocked, which eliminates many residential connections. This is less of a big issue, but not ideal.

      -molo

      --
      Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
  23. 32 bit as numbers by vlm · · Score: 3, Informative

    Two extremely closely related questions:

    1) Conversion from 16 bit to 32 bit BGP AS numbers half a decade ago or so: Went smoother or rougher than you personally expected? Or just right?

    2) How does the answer to #1 above modify your view of whats likely to happen with the ipv4 to ipv6 transition?

    --
    "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
  24. IPv6 once again... by Ransak · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Greetings. Once upon a time I was fortunate enough to ask you about IPv6, way back in 2002. The phrase '6 by 6' (for IPv6 by 2006) was the goal, but it seems we've missed that target. Do you ever foresee mandatory widespread adoption of IPv6 happening? Should IPv6 have been designed to be interoperable with IPv4?

    --
    "Powers. I have them."
    1. Re:IPv6 once again... by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1

      Should IPv6 have been designed to be interoperable with IPv4?

      Isn't it already?

      --
      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
  25. Net Neutrality by SgtChaireBourne · · Score: 1

    How can your average Internet user best ensure that net neutrality is continued or even strengthened and not whittled away or outright canceled?

    --
    Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
  26. hardware accelerated ipv6 by vlm · · Score: 1

    Hardware accelerated ipv4 routing/switching was out there, I donno, at least a decade ago, or more. Your expectations on the rollout of hardware accelerated ipv6 switching?

    --
    "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
  27. Was that supposed to be you in the Matrix? by wisebabo · · Score: 1

    Sorry if this brings back traumatic memories but was "The Architect" in "The Matrix Reloaded" (the second Matrix film) supposed to be you? Did the producers get your permission? Did you like your portrayal?

    (Or maybe that was "The Colonel" from KFC after he went on a diet.)

  28. Would you have come up with TCP/IP today. by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The key advantage of TCP/IP is how it handles for Loss packets, going across an unknown network and far more failure prone hardware. However today as the internet is now running on much more reliable hardware and the path goes threw some well maintained backbone. Would you have come with TCP/IP today if you had access to modern technology/infrastructure?
    Or do you think you would have a different design all together?

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  29. You really didn't by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What a giant mess you've created. You really didn't think this whole internet thing through did you?

  30. Interplanetary TCP/IP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Dr. Cerf,

    I had the pleasure of working with you years ago at MCI. I recall that at the time, you spoke frequently of the need for an "Interplanetary TCP/IP" standard leading to development of an "Interplanetary Internet." With the recent budget cuts for U.S. manned missions, do you see this effort becoming more or less imperative? On a related topic, do you believe humanity will need to rely more on autonomous robots for space exploration? Or will Americans have Chinese and Russian space-chauffeurs for the foreseeable future?

    Thank you as always.

  31. Joining our moon to terrestrial internet by Deb-fanboy · · Score: 1

    In the future, hopefully in the not too distant future, we will begin to utilise the moon.

    Do you think that it will be possible to extend the terrestrial internet to encompass the moon? Would you envisage if that happened that it would be using an extended version of TCP? Or do you think that there would have to be two separate internets one on each body?

  32. Slow start is not slow! by ard · · Score: 1

    Can you elaborate how TCP "slow start" got its name.
    Since the congestion window is exponentially opened, it's not exactly slow.
    I mean, congestion avoidance, with additive increase, that's what I would call slow in comparison.

  33. Encryption by jones_supa · · Score: 1

    Do you think that Internet traffic should be encrypted end-to-end? If TCP/IP would be created today, would it include encryption features?

    1. Re:Encryption by Lennie · · Score: 1

      It is already available.

      As an example you can do opportunistic encryption (IPSEC) with DNSSEC.

      --
      New things are always on the horizon
  34. what are you working on?? by vinitagrawal · · Score: 2

    The technical project that is most close to you, right now.

  35. Pornography by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Did you ever forsee the primary usage of the internet being pornography?

  36. Fighting Internet Evil by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There are currently pretty widely held beliefs that some groups (such as Facebook) have superbly evil business practices. I know Google is in competition with the company, but what, if anything, is Google planning to do top stop the actual perpetrators of suck things hiding behind the indemnification of a corporation?

  37. T-Shirt by edstaffin · · Score: 1

    Where can I get one of those cool "IP on everything!" tshirt?!? Thanks!

  38. Privacy on the internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How would you go about stopping, or at least curtailing, the erosion of privacy on the internet?

  39. communication integrity and privacy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What is your view on communication integrity and privacy?

  40. Freedom by booch · · Score: 1

    The Internet has provided an excellent medium for freely expressing different viewpoints. But governments and businesses are increasingly threatened by such freedoms, and doing a lot to suppress them. How do you see this playing out, and how can we ensure that we keep such freedoms?

    --
    Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
  41. .here TLD by TheLink · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Do you think there should be a .here TLD, reserved officially for local use in an analogous way to the way that the RFC1918 IP addresses are reserved officially for private use?

    Currently many are coming up with their own adhoc TLDs for local use. In my opinion this is suboptimal. Having a standard official TLD would allow more interesting things to "organically grow" on it.

    See also: http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-yeoh-tldhere-01

    --
  42. DRM and the Internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The flip side of the same coin:
    "What is you opinion regarding Internet DRM?
    Do you think anything should be changed?"

  43. Question for Vint Cerf by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Looking at the state of the world, and the Internet today, what is your (a) greatest hope for the Internet's future, and (b) greatest fear?

  44. About how other people perceive you by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Do other people (who may not be that computer literate) perceive you as some kind of cool tough-looking computer wizard? Anyone can admit you don't look like the stereotypical slightly overweight caveman-looking nerd, but rather like a big tough well-dressed and classy man with an awesome beard. How do other people (teenagers, average Joes/Janes, etc.) see you when you brag about creating the Internet? Do they admire you (or at least give the impression that they do)?

  45. Could IPv6 have been designed better? by Daniel+Phillips · · Score: 1

    Could IPv6 have been designed to be more like IPv4 and thus easier to adopt? In retrospect, would it have been better to restrict design changes to the minimum required to support larger addresses?

    --
    Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
  46. 6lowpan: the domotics/embedded standard and when? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hello,

    6lowpan is the proposed/open ip-standard for microcontrollers (for e.g. domotics, streetlighting, "smart powergrids", ...). Vint Cerf's whine-cellar is already controlled by it - it uses products from Arch Rock, which was bought by Cisco - and google will probably launch a lightbulb based on it by the end of the year, which can then be controlled by an android-phone. It is based on ipv6 so that it can form the internet of things.

    I've split it up in multiple small questions:

      * Will it have enough support to take off? (biggest competitor is Zigbee, which also is going towards ip)
      * When will it probably take off? (next year?) ,* Will the lack of support for ipv6 (in Western countries) not slow down the take up?
      * Will it be standardized/open enough for an opensource community? There is a mesh-header in the protocol, which isn't used by open implementations like those in Contiki because it there are drawbacks to it. The routing-protocol RPL was developed to work on the ip-layer and which is standardized. However, implementations like those of NXP (the google light-bulb uses their hardware at least) use their own stack (jennet-ip), which uses this mesh-header, which causes routing at layer 2. The stack will be opensourced at the end of this year - the time at which google will "launch" the lightbulb -, but I would rather use an open implementation like that one contiki. It also doesn't use the mesh-header, but that is a personal preference.
      * Will it be cheaper then current home-automation-systems as it is more open?
        * Will people/companies be cautious enough regarding the security-aspects of 6lowpan (and similar technologies). What about a virus causing havoc in your home - lights don't go on, temperature goes up and up, ...?

    I'm quite interested into this myself as I would like to use 6lowpan myself and even develop for it (if it is open enough).

    References:
        * Arch Rock - Cisco: http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2010/corp_092010.html
        * wine cellar/internet of smart objects: http://www.ipforsmartobjects.org/2010/07/video-vint-cerf-smart-grid-talk.html
        * google light bulb: http://www.sunwavelighting.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=171&Itemid=9

  47. Why is TCP/IP a bytestream? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Almost every protocol on top of TCP has to re-invent framing. Why is TCP/IP a byte-stream protocol instead of a packet stream protocol?

  48. What can we do to get ISPs to switch on IPv6? by jandrese · · Score: 2

    One of the biggest hurdles to IPv6 adoption today is that the average home user simply cannot get an IPv6 address from their ISP. Tunnels are hacker toys, and completely impractical/impossible for people who are using their ISP's "home router". What do you think we can do to convince ISPs to start rolling out IPv6 [i]before[/i] there is a crisis? Everybody agrees that the transition will go smoother if we take it slow and easy, but nobody is willing to make the first step, and IPv4 addresses aren't still being inexorably depleted the world over.

    --

    I read the internet for the articles.
  49. 6lowpan: the ip-domestics/embedded standard? by MichelB · · Score: 1

    Hello, 6lowpan is the proposed/open ip-standard for microcontrollers (for e.g. domotics, streetlighting, "smart powergrids", ...). Vint Cerf's whine-cellar is already controlled by it - it uses products from Arch Rock, which was bought by Cisco - and google will probably launch a lightbulb based on it by the end of the year, which can then be controlled by an android-phone. It is based on ipv6 so that it can form the internet of things. I've split it up in multiple small questions: * Will it have enough support to take off? (biggest competitor is Zigbee, which also is going towards ip) * When will it probably take off? (next year?) ,* Will the lack of support for ipv6 (in Western countries) not slow down the take up? * Will it be standardized/open enough for an opensource community? There is a mesh-header in the protocol, which isn't used by open implementations like those in Contiki because it there are drawbacks to it. The routing-protocol RPL was developed to work on the ip-layer and which is standardized. However, implementations like those of NXP (the google light-bulb uses their hardware at least) use their own stack (jennet-ip), which uses this mesh-header, which causes routing at layer 2. The stack will be opensourced at the end of this year - the time at which google will "launch" the lightbulb -, but I would rather use an open implementation like that one contiki. It also doesn't use the mesh-header, but that is a personal preference. * Will it be cheaper then current home-automation-systems as it is more open? * Will people/companies be cautious enough regarding the security-aspects of 6lowpan (and similar technologies). What about a virus causing havoc in your home - lights don't go on, temperature goes up and up, ...? I'm quite interested into this myself as I would like to use 6lowpan myself and even develop for it (if it is open enough). References: * Arch Rock - Cisco: http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2010/corp_092010.html * wine cellar/internet of smart objects: http://www.ipforsmartobjects.org/2010/07/video-vint-cerf-smart-grid-talk.html * google light bulb: http://www.sunwavelighting.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=171&Itemid=9 Michel Brabants Belgium

  50. Statutory Internet by ElitistWhiner · · Score: 2

    Hello Vint

    I've enjoyed since com-priv days, the rise of the Internet - Thank you. 20/20 hindsight shows the Internet grew without statutory jurispudence. Is that statutory blackhole in which the Internet now lives responsible for holding back growth and development of Internet economies, digital cash and cyber laws that are truly global w/o jurisdictional boundary?

    If a global medium is not able to support global economy, however does the world escape market constraints bounded by juridictional rules, regs, statutes and accords to enable freedom of exchange, trade, commerce and rising World-wide economic tide?

    RexRiley

  51. Why the colon in IPv6? by jandrese · · Score: 1

    The biggest thing I hate about IPv6 is that the standard format uses colon as the digit separator. On most keyboards, that is a fairly awkward character to type, especially in rapid fire between groups of hex digits. Also, it causes problems for the many many programs that specify ports after IP addresses with a colon (like URIs!). IPv4's use of the period instead is much nicer. If you didn't want to reuse the period (so programs can distinguish between the two types of addresses more easily), why not use dash instead? It's just as visually appealing and doesn't require you to hit shift to type it. It would have saved a whole lot of ugly brackets around IP addresses.

    Any aesthetic qualities of the colon are lost when you have to do this:
    http:/// [1005:3321:5a52:4fca::1]:8080/
    instead of:
    http://1005-3321-5a52-4fca--1:8080/

    And that second example was noticeably quicker for me to type.

    Edit: And of course because this is Slashdot it made a huge mess of the first URL and forced me to mess it up slightly to be readable!

    --

    I read the internet for the articles.
  52. What's it like... by Registered+Coward+v2 · · Score: 1

    growing up as the son of Bennet Cerf?

    --
    I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
  53. Has the Internet become too centralised? by slashsloth · · Score: 1

    That is to say do you think that too much power & control now lies in the hands of the Internet Service Providers, thereby making it, at least in terms of control if not routing, too centralised & too easily manipulated by the powerful few. I guess this question stems from a viewpoint that it should be somehow democratic & free (as in free speech). Also do you share my pedantic belief that the public Internet should be spelt with a capital 'I'?

    --
    The ducks in the bathroom are not mine. [http://www.27bslash6.com]
  54. Censorship? by slashsloth · · Score: 1

    How do you feel about the censorship & control efforts of countries such as China?

    --
    The ducks in the bathroom are not mine. [http://www.27bslash6.com]
  55. IGMP/RTP/UDP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What are your views on IGMP/RTP/UDP as a transmission interface?

  56. Internet of Things and Google by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How do you see the future of interactions between the internet of things and Google?

  57. Dress by jrivar59 · · Score: 2

    Few human's can attributed to be both communications protocol inventers and well.. dapper.

    Can you speak to the importance of being well dressed, groomed, etc. when interacting with non-technical people? Do you attribute your stylistic dress to your overall success in anyway?

  58. Ooh! Settle An Argument For Me! by Greyfox · · Score: 2
    Though my deep and thoughtful meditation on IP addressing, I have realized that an IP address is simply a number. We canonically break it up into 4 smaller numbers that are presumably easier to remember. However if you stack all the bits of those smaller numbers together, you get a bigger number, and that number is actually the address.

    Moreover, every C standard library that I have ever tried is able to resolve this bigger number to the correct address. If I ping a 10 digit number in that address range, the C standard library will figure it out. It is my position that this is a feature and not a bug.

    It seems that the OSX Firefox Guys don't agree with me. Admittedly they do have an RFC on the subject, but their browser breaks a known behavior that every other TCP/IP client program on the planet exhibits, including other operating system versions of Firefox!

    Would you kindly bludgeon one of us into submission? I don't really care which side of the argument you come down on, but one of us has to be able to say "Because Vint Cerf said so!"

    Oh, and while I've got you, I'm sick of writing stateless http applications. May I have your permission to go back to writing plain old socket servers on other ports, providing data based on whatever query format I feel like implementing? It kind of looks like REST, I suppose, except that I don't have to load 14 layers of frameworks to get to that point.

    --

    I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

  59. Re:IPV6 and a related question by gr8_phk · · Score: 1

    With IPv6 we could all have fixed IP addresses (or blocks of them) at home. Is this likely to happen? What do you see as the pros and cons from the ISP point of view for doing this? I think the reasons I want it are the reasons they don't, but I'd like to know how someone with your perspective sees it.

  60. Beginning of the internet by atari2600a · · Score: 1

    People always say the internet started with the first networked computers, or the ARPANET & similar networks. I, on the other hand, put the epoch at the first implementation of TCP/IP. What do YOU consider it to be?

  61. first trimester elegance abortion by epine · · Score: 1

    Mod parent up. In ten years I've never said that. Old dog, new trick. Also, was the mistake thinking we needed to do this too quickly?

    But you never have the necessary experience to design something right the first time, so that is not really a worthwhile discussion.

    Absolutely, there are many questions here unworthy of extended discussion. One doesn't to consult Donald Knuth to master quicksort. There's a huge literature on overdesign, discounting through net-present-value, adoption risk, and the difficult promulgation of technical standards.

    TCP/IP has had roughly the same amazing thirty year run as x86. I've followed the twists and turns with x86 far more than IP, so I have a pretty good idea what I'd write on a napkin to send back to the original x86 design team--supposing it was actually a going concern to make the design not suck and that suckitude was not actually the criteria by which IBM originally chose this part, leading it's relevance thirty years later. (On the former question, I think Intel wanted to make a good part; on the later question, I think IBM was seriously gun shy about the future arriving quick and capable. In Terminator mythology, the napkin to Intel would fail, and be followed by a cyanide capsule to quavering bean counters over at Big Blue.)

    First suggestion for Intel: offset the segments by 8 bits instead of 4 bits. This gets you a 16MB address space which gets you to viable 32-bit multitasking without a foray through DOS extenders. Let me put this iron into the fire to demonstrate, in a few minutes, the pleasure it will bring to thousands of programmers if you don't follow this advice. I think there would have been very little practical cost to this--even if I don't tell them that segmented data protection would fail. That feeble 20-bit address space was penny wise and pound foolish any way you look at it.

    Second suggestion: either set all the status bits, or none at all with extremely few exceptions. In the short term this simplifies compilers, in the long run it expedites data flow implementations (i.e. OOO scheduling).

    Third: Variable instructions length is a mixed blessing. Good if the first byte determines instruction length. Have at most one byte in the instruction which encodes allowed combinations of what might otherwise become prefixes/overrides. Variable instruction length improves icache density; a 30% efficiency gain over 32K of icache more than pays for 500 extra transistors in the instruction decode logic. Think about slope and intercept on instruction encoding density. Ideally your first byte tells you if you have a override bitfield and which byte contains it.

    Fourth: Have more index registers than just SI and DI. This one is tricky since any expansion of the register set slows task switching. Maybe it should wait and become "have more index registers than ESI and EDI". But I think not. 16 registers is plenty in a RMW architecture. You don't need 32 registers unless blinded by RISC purity.

    Fifth: Plan to transition the x87 co-processor from stack-based to register addressed at the earliest possible opportunity.

    Sixth: Add an instruction to bit reverse bytes. Add an instruction to popcnt bytes. Chicken and egg problem. If you build it, they will come. Always have an instruction to byte reverse your longest supported register.

    All the other x86 complaints: ignore completely. It's the future trying to eat your lunch after depreciating your opportunity cost and adoption risk to zero.

    If you recall clearly what the world looked like when ideas are first on the drawing board (x86 is my personal case study for thinking about this), it's a lot harder to send advice back through the time machine that isn't actively dangerous.

    How many of my suggestions would have rewarded them right out of the gate? Not a one, unless they put a full court press on high quality C compiler, to exploit the suggested register

  62. Concurrent Multi-path and Multi-streaming by j+h+woodyatt · · Score: 1

    TCP port 443 is the new waist of the Internet, and it doesn't look like that's going to change with the transition to IPv6 either. Should we just forget about concurrent multi-path and multi-streaming at the transport layer and do it all at the application layer? Or do you think there might still be room for fixing these problems at the transport layer?

    --
    jhw
  63. responsibility by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    simply, where does your responsibility for the internet end? Are you to blame for only the good things?

    -rick

  64. Better security by design by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Which wasn't there before initially as good as it could be (because look @ it out there today online with all the hacker-cracker types, security breaches, or malwares that took advantage & just due to flaw in base early original yet current IP design... E.G.-> DNS for example (kaminsky hack, redirection/dns-poisoning, & far more), & many other services over time too)...

    * I'd wager that I would do the security end better because it's widely known it was a major factor/concern in the original design as was say, re-routing automatically around downed routers etc. (due to for instance, nuclear attacks)

    Just based on the "malware/hacker-cracker explosion" the last 8++ yrs. now, etc./et al, too mostly...

    APK

    P.S.=> More address space possible too, of course. I wager the folks that designed it NEVER thought it was going to be so widely used & by so many first of all, or, get to be as "big" as it is today possibly as well - because IF they did? We would have had a more "IPv6-like" setup already for example...

    ... apk

  65. Two Girls by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What did you think of two girls one cup?

    What are your feelings towards goaste.cx?

  66. Interplanetary Communication by doclight · · Score: 1

    As we (hopefully) step out into the solar system, how do you see the internet adapting to meet the need for interplanetary communication (communication protocols, addressing, name resolution, carrier mediums, etc...)?

  67. The IP of TCP/IP by Goglu · · Score: 1

    The head of UN's WIPO believes that the Internet (and obviously the stack on which it runs) should have been patented. How do you believe it would have evolved, would TCP/IP be protected by patents?

  68. Smart Grid by kiwimate · · Score: 2

    You're currently on the Governing Board of the NIST Smart Grid Interoperability Panel. What is the state of standards development, and how big an impact does it have to move national infrastructure communications into the public IP arena so far as our ability to strengthen and expand our infrastructure? Conversely, how big are the threats in this new world?

  69. Subnet-Independent Multicast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Do you see a use for subnet-independent multicast? By this I mean: instead of one address, the packet has a list of addresses and is only duplicated when routing requires. It seems to me this could drastically reduce the bandwidth needs in cases like broadcast video streaming.

  70. No more "peace and love" in software designs by BeforeCoffee · · Score: 1

    I take it that the "route around failures" and other original design features of TCP/IP and the Internet as a whole relied upon trusting others always having good intentions and cooperating. Those designs were necessary at the time and the reason the internet exists today.

    Nowadays distrust, firewalls, and coding defensively is the norm (or it should be). In that light, the internet's design seems creaky and vulnerable.

    Do you have any thoughts or feelings on how software has changed and seemingly become so treacherous since you first designed TCP/IP? Would you advocate a ground-up redesign of internet transports and protocols starting with TCP/IP?

  71. How can we bring trust back to the internet? by Madman · · Score: 2

    One of the secrets of the internet's massive success is the lack of controls over it; if there had been strict security and processes in place it would likely not have come about. One of the downsides is that all our security measures are tacked-on, there is no built-in security to the protocols used on the internet and as a result security is a massive problem. How do we go from the wild west to having at least a reasonable level of trusted computing?

  72. The number of addresses in IPv6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If we really do have an IP address for every atom in the universe, how can we use it in physics?