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Vinton Cerf

I had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Vinton Cerf give a talk at LSU on September 30, 2003. Below are the notes I took. He was rushing through part of his talk, so I missed stuff here and there. Hopefully this will be of interest to someone. Also I think his outline is on the web somewhere.

Internet Past and Future

LSU, 9/30/2003

Introduced by LSU Chancellor:
co-designer of TCP/IP
MCI engineer
DARPA
Internet Society
IEEE
ACS
…etc.

Personal

magazine spreads, him and wife, friendly cometition about it
wife has cochlear implant, previously unable to hear — after 30 years of marriage, she finally had a conversation with Vint after operation

Internet history

New Aphorism:
power corrupts
powerpoint corrupts absolutely

www.isoc.org/internet/history
arpanet — 1969
packet switching
50kbps

military command and control

packet radio (mid 70s): collision network
Hawaii — 2 channel, half-duplex, sat, multiple ground stations (the ALOHA system)

packet speech 30 years ago

packet video — late 70s

global statistics

1997 — 22.5M hosts (I missed the number of users)
2003 — 171M hosts 605M
europe has more users than US, far east catching up fast

IP

layering of protocols
IP is neck of hourglass (lower and upper layers support diverseness)
US regulations ill-suited for Inet
radio, TV, telephone, etc..... regs for each one
IP doesn't care what goes over it

major technological issues

reliabiliy/availability
security
broadband
- (access, symmetry, not competitive)
GRID (virtualization of everything)
- problems similar to beowulf clusters: number crunching vs. communication latencies
privacy
authentication
data integrity
IPv6 implementationinternet-enabled appliances (java invented for this. Vint didn't mention this, but did refer to net-enabled refrigerators later)
security for all these devices
IP telephones
SIP — NAPTR: X digits to IP phones
net fridges: emailing you that you need to buy milk, etc.
histories of daily-use things (wine corks, etc).
missing sock problem

IP address consumption

he takes blame for 32 bits in 70s
NAT interferes with security (??? — possibly IPsec auth-type issues?)
nano engines, none smaller than 46 molecules, will have enough IPv6 space for them (???? — I missed this part)

policy discussion topics

flat-rate business models
IP
ICANN (I missed it)
flat-rate
Inet is fixed-proce
SIP telephony is taking us there
MCI's Neighborhood and Advantage services are insensitive of underlying technology
issues: cost and pricing compatible?

regulating telecoms

advocates opening IP broadband to all ISPs, like phone service

taxation

people
services & products sold
no sales taxes (what about use taxes? this idea again (he didn't raise it of course) )
censorship
technologically flawed model

security and privacy

tension between goals

future look

deep space network madrid, australia, california
radio-isotope power supplies
store&forward network, major lag
Mars: 1mbps transmitting back ()
InterPlaNet
next mission cantake advantage of previous mission, existing relays, etc.
40 minute lags at times, uncertainties of transimssion, TCP/IP can't work here
disconnect protocols, like email
Interplanetary Planet Protocol (I missed this, verify this, I think it's ICP or something...)
sending bundles of information
by 2012, have 2-planet internet