Yes, the father of the Internet, um, TCP/IP protocol, Vint Cerf, who's the Chief Internet Evangelist at Google is coming to U of T. He will meet with graduate students in the morning and then give a talk at 3:00 pm in BA1170. Here's his bio and abstract.
Abstract
Internet continues to grow around the world and expand its modes of operation and access most recently to include mobile operation. Geographically based information is becoming a valuable commodity in the Internet environment. Digital information poses a variety of challenges:
Old business models colliding with voice over IP Digital information formats colliding with intellectual property conventions Preservation of information colliding with changing software for interpreting the bits Privacy and the seemingly boundless memory of the Internet IPv4 and IPv6 and the side-effects of running out of address space Expanding the Internet to operate across the solar system poses its own interesting problems.
Please prepare for an interactive session!
Bio
Vinton G. Cerf is vice president and chief Internet evangelist for Google. In this role, he is responsible for identifying new enabling technologies to support the development of advanced, Internet-based products and services from Google. He will also be an active public face for Google in the Internet world.
Cerf is the former senior vice president of Technology Strategy for MCI. In this role, Cerf was responsible for helping to guide corporate strategy development from the technical perspective. Previously, Cerf served as MCI’s senior vice president of Architecture and Technology, leading a team of architects and engineers to design advanced networking frameworks including Internet-based solutions for delivering a combination of data, information, voice and video services for business and consumer use.
Widely known as one of the "Fathers of the Internet," Cerf is the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet. In December 1997, President Clinton presented the U.S. National Medal of Technology to Cerf and his colleague, Robert E. Kahn, for founding and developing the Internet. Kahn and Cerf were named the recipients of the ACM Alan M. Turing award in 2004 for their work on the Internet protocols. The Turing award is sometimes called the “Nobel Prize of Computer Science.” In November 2005, President George Bush awarded Cerf and Kahn the Presidential Medal of Freedom for their work. The medal is the highest civilian award given by the United States to its citizens.
Prior to rejoining MCI in 1994, Cerf was vice president of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI). As vice president of MCI Digital Information Services from 1982-1986, he led the engineering of MCI Mail, the first commercial email service to be connected to the Internet.
During his tenure from 1976-1982 with the U.S. Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Cerf played a key role leading the development of Internet and Internet-related packet data and security technologies.
Vint Cerf serves as chairman of the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Cerf served as founding president of the Internet Society from 1992-1995 and in 1999 served a term as chairman of the Board. In addition, Cerf is honorary chairman of the IPv6 Forum, dedicated to raising awareness and speeding introduction of the new Internet protocol. Cerf served as a member of the U.S. Presidential Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) from 1997 to 2001 and serves on several national, state and industry committees focused on cyber-security. Cerf sits on the Board of Directors for the Endowment for Excellence in Education, Avanex Corporation and the ClearSight Systems Corporation. He also serves as 1st Vice President and Treasurer of the National Science & Technology Medals Foundation. Cerf is a Fellow of the IEEE, ACM, and American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the International Engineering Consortium, the Computer History Museum, the Annenberg Center for Communications at USC and the National Academy of Engineering.
Cerf is a recipient of numerous awards and commendations in connection with his work on the Internet. These include the Marconi Fellowship, Charles Stark Draper award of the National Academy of Engineering, the Prince of Asturias award for science and technology, the National Medal of Science from Tunisia, the St. Cyril and St. Methodius Order (Grand Cross) of Bulgaria, the Alexander Graham Bell Award presented by the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf, the NEC Computer and Communications Prize, the Silver Medal of the International Telecommunications Union, the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal, the IEEE Koji Kobayashi Award, the ACM Software and Systems Award, the ACM SIGCOMM Award, the Computer and Communications Industries Association Industry Legend Award, installation in the Inventors Hall of Fame, the Yuri Rubinsky Web Award, the Kilby Award , the Yankee Group/Interop/Network World Lifetime Achievement Award, the George R. Stibitz Award, the Werner Wolter Award, the Andrew Saks Engineering Award, the IEEE Third Millennium Medal, the Computerworld/Smithsonian Leadership Award, the J.D. Edwards Leadership Award for Collaboration, World Institute on Disability Annual award and the Library of Congress Bicentennial Living Legend medal. Cerf was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in May 2006.
Interesting to see what he talks about for a planetary internet and what type of protocols will be required. Certainly TCP/IP is not going to work due to delay and retransmission time, which is much more than here on earth, so there's going to have to be some changes to the protocol. This kind of problem reminds me of the last problem in the ECE628 exam on Computer Networks that was taught by Prof. Gordon Agnew at the University of Waterloo. The question was about how we were going to be hired as an engineer to design the internet and deploy it on Mars. We were supposed to use all the networking concepts that we learned in the course such as transmission protocols, access control protocols, discuss reliability, why we chose a particular protocol, and channel medium, etc. It was a totally free question, which there was really no wrong answer, if you justified it properly. I remember that question being 20 marks out of the total final exam. At the time, I was like, that's a crazy question. But now, it's not really so crazy, now that the next evolution of the internet is going to be the solar system.
On Technorati: vint cerf, planetary internet
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