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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.)

20 of 109 comments (clear)

  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 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.

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      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    2. 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?
  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.
  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?

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    My work here is dung.
  5. 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!

  6. IPV6 by pedestrian+crossing · · Score: 3, Interesting

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

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    A house divided against itself cannot stand.
    1. 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.
    2. 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
  7. 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?

  8. 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?

  9. 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
  10. 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
  11. 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
  12. 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.
  13. 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
  14. 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."
  15. 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.
  16. .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

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