Vinton Cerf

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Vinton Cerf

• Co-Creator of the Internet

By Jeffery Park
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• Cerf was born in Los Angeles in 1943.
• From 1961 to 1965, Cerf attended Stanford and
  graduated with a B.S. in mathematics.
• After graduation, he started work at IBM as a
  system engineer, but decided to go back to school
  at UCLA to learn more about his true passion
  computers.

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There was something amazingly enticing about
programming... You created your own universe and
you were master of it.
At UCLA, Cerf joined a team of students that
helped build the first node of the ARPANET (UCLA,
Stanford, University of Utah, UCSB). The group
called themselves the Network Working Group
(NWG).
One of the NWGs main tasks was creating a
standard for communication, or protocol, so that
incompatible host computers on ARPAs network
could communicate with each other.
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Creating Protocols

• The NWG created several small protocols which
  could later be joined to see network
  communication as a whole.
• The group created the Network Control Protocol
  (NCP) in 1970, and other protocols that were
  designed to work on NCP (ex. Telnet).

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The Birth of the Internet

• Bolt Beranek Newman (BBN) sent the first IMP
  (Interface Message Processor) to UCLA in August
  1969.
• From that point on, the ARPANET began to grow
  quicker than most had imagined.
• During this time period, Cerft met Bob Kahn, who
  is also credited with the creation of the
  internet.

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Bob Kahns Question

• Kahn asked Cerf a question that changed the
  world Look, my problem is how I get a computer
  thats on a satellite and a computer on a radio
  net and a computer on ARPANET to communicate
  uniformly with each other without realizing
  whats going on in between?
• At this point, the two joined together to create
  the most important protocol yet the TCP
  (Transmission-Control Protocol)

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Creating a Gateway

• Cerf and Kahns idea was to have a gateway
  computer between each network to route packets.
  This computers only task would be to pass
  packets back and forth. Since different networks
  transmitted with different protocols, a new
  method had to be developed.

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A New Protocol

• The two started their work in 1973, and completed
  their idea in 1974. In May, they introduced their
  idea to the International Networking Group.
• The idea of the TCP is similar to how the post
  office system works Information is packed into
  datagrams, which acts like envelopes. The
  datagram is then sent to a gateway computer,
  which reads only the delivery information to send
  the datagram to host computers. The host computer
  would then be able to open the letter and read
  what is kept inside the datagram.
• TCP allowed many small networks to join with
  other networks, which started the Internet as we
  know it today.

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The Internet
Though TCP was the beginning of a new way of
communication, Cerf continued to update TCP and
look for new and more effective methods of
communication between computers and networks.
In 1976, Cerf started working as program manager
of the ARPA Internet at ARPA. While there, he
and his team made yet another update that split
TCP into two parts IP and TCP. IP would be
responsible for routing packages, and TCP would
do everything else.
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TCP/IP, The Internet Today
The Internet that we all use today uses TCP/IP.
Without the protocol that was created by Cerf,
the highly connected Internet would not exist.
The net would simply be a bunch of networks that
would not be able to properly communicate with
each other.
Today, Cerf is the chief Internet strategist for
MCI WorldCom. He has done work for NASA, and
believes the future of communication is in
satellite communication.
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Cerf strongly believes that the future of the
Internet is in interplanetary communication.
Satellites would be used as gateways to transfer
information. The time is now to think beyond
the Earth.