Vint Cerf

 

Out of all the fond memories from childhood one of the most lovingly cherished is hearing the bed-time stories from my grandmother.  I remember that magician, who always appeared at the end and at a snap of fingers, everything changed; everything was converted into everything so easy, so beautiful and so much worth living for. I always had this urge to meet this magician, who could change the world. I so wished he appeared in front of me so I could state my million questions in front of him.

 

 

This feeling revisited me when I held the microphone to pose my question to the honourable speaker Vinton Cerf, commonly known as the father of Internet. There he was, architect from matrix trilogy, man dressed in three piece suit with a friendly smile on his face. It took me a while to let it sink in.

 

 

Vint spoke for an hour and it was like music to my ears. He explained how the APRANET began as graduate's project in UCLA and with Bob Kahn it shaped up into TCP-IP, commonly known as Internet. He gave us the insight on the facts, it is always when you ask the right question, and the answer is more than evident. Vint and Bob had restrictions laid down and clear aim, to facilitate communication and synchronisation between military stations and computer operating at these stations. Only to make things complicated they were not to change or modulate the network and yet had to connect computers from a ship guarding coast in pacific with the computer at pentagon may be and with out computers being concerned about the network connecting them. Vint was very honest in admitting that he didn't imagine 35 years back that the internet will take the magnitude it has taken today. He and Bob were out to fix the problem and that is when they came up with the Internet. As a graduate student Vint wrote that historic program into Singma-7, which is now according to him is in a museum.

 

Internet began as military restricted application and with great efforts from Vint, it finally reached the lay-man in USA by 1988. He put forward the proposal in front of congress to approve MCI to connect to the internet and with great difficulties he got the approval for one year. This one year proved to be a revolution in e-World and by 1989 there were three internet service providers in USA. This number was humble but it was meant to grow and grow fast.

 

Vint has lead many experiments with internet and connecting various digital machines on internet. He briefly talked about VoIP, connecting home appliances on internet, standardisation and central control unit using Internet. Mobiles (Cell Phones) are to be the future of internet; as most of interaction with net is expected through mobile devices. Vint advocated usage of multiple digital devices that are connected to the internet to solve the daily needs and problems, just to quote a small example global positioning system, autopilot and internet enabled cell phone to get to the desired location with least effort. He talked about inventing easier user interfaces to access net, may it be mobile device or laptop.

 

 

Vint also addressed some of the challenges faced by i-net as of now. Problem of security still tops the list. It is evident that there are bugs in the system but where they are, is the question. 32-bit ip design is soon run out of the ip-address space. It is being resolved with new 128 bit address protocol. He briefly addressed the issues such as mobility persistence, multiple routing, broadcast utilisation, multi-homing and so on.

 

 

Presently Vint is working on Interplanetary Internet protocol. It is supposed to have 4 layers and is expected to be executed by 2010. Its major aim would be data collection and data transport from Mars or any other location in space. At present a customise program is written for each computer that is sent in space to facilitate the communication with its base station, he talked about standardising it to the new protocol. He also mentioned the possibility of commercialization of Interplanetary Internet. He concluded the seminar with some very interesting facts and figures about internet and answering some of the interesting questions posed by us, Googlers.

 

It felt extremely proud to be amidst of such great minds and down to earth personalities. It just edged the feeling sharper into mind that Google, even though it is Google Adwords is much more than ad-reviews, free food, monthly t-shirts and pick up and drops. It is the vision that drives the man and fuel of hard-work is what makes the difference.

 

 

I am still in my dream land of having met that magician. I am sure there is a long way to go.

 

 

 

Neo

23-Feb-07.