Ask Dr. Vinton Cerf About the Internet

If anyone can claim to have "invented the Internet," (or at least to have co-invented it) it's Vint Cerf, who never makes this claim himself. But he's certainly had a hand in shaping most of what we call "the Internet" today, and is now working on taking the Internet or something like it to Mars and other planets. A Google Search for "Vint Cerf" brings up thousands of responses, so you should have no trouble coming up with a unique, interesting question for him. (As is usual with Slashdot interviews, we'll send 10 of the top-moderated questions to Dr. Cerf about 24 hours after this post, and publish his answers shortly after he gets them back to us.)

Early days of the net

[El_Smack]

What was it like working with Al Gore?

Re:Early days of the net

[Alomex]

What was it like working with Al Gore?

Actually Vint has publicly commented on this, and (seriously) said that Al Gore as a senator provided crucial support, allow me to quote: "The Internet would not be where it is in the United States without the strong support given to it and related research areas by the Vice President in his current role and in his earlier role as Senator."

No, Al did not invent the internet, but yes, he was a key player back then.

Al helped build the Intenet

[0x0d0a]

Al (and Clinton) shoveled massive amounts of federal dollars into producing the Internet. If not for their strong pushing of spreading the Internet all over (starting in educational institutions), we wouldn't be anywhere near where we are today.

Yes, Al misspoke. But he was also crucial to the Internet being what it is today, so he gets some points.

Re:Al helped build the Intenet

[richie2000]

Yes, Al misspoke. But he was also crucial to the Internet being what it is today, so he gets some points.

Al Gore's karma: Good (mostly affected by popular vote):

-1, Political Exaggeration
+2, Crucial Contribution

This senator is currently rated +1, Insightful but Boring.

Re:Al helped build the Intenet

[rjkimble]

I really don't think Al Gore or anybody in the federal government was all that crucial in "producing" or "building" the Internet after 1993 (start of the Clinton/Gore administration). The Internet was alive and thriving and widespread (in the U.S. anyway) back in the late 80's -- I used it all the time for email via my CompuServe account in 1990, for example. And Linus made his first postings [li.org] about Linux to a comp.os.minix newsgroup in 1991. What DID grow during the Clinton/Gore administration was the World Wide Web, which admittedly is the "killer application" of Internet technologies. However, I don't know how much the federal government really had to do with the growth of the web. And I don't know how many federal dollars went into upgrading the web infrastructure. I think most of the buildup during the 90's was commercial, pure and simple.

It probably is true that Gore was an important -- but hardly crucial -- player during his years as a senator. I think Vint Cerf has said as much. However, I don't really think that the Clinton/Gore administration can be given a whole lot of credit for building the Internet. You might be able to make a case for the World Wide Web. At least they didn't get in the way, which is often what happens when politicians get interested in something.

Re:Al helped build the Intenet

[0x0d0a]

Outside of universities, and a few companies, how many non-techies used the Internet before the whole Information Superhighway thing that Clinton/Gore pushed as an agenda? It wasn't a tool that most people knew how to use or wanted. Sure, I could hop on a VAX terminal and cruise around, but I didn't see widespread desktop systems with Internet access around until after Clinton/Gore.

Clinton/Gore went for the schools, got people used to it, and funded library and other public access systems to try to get as many people able to use the Internet as a tool as possible, and gave incentives to telecom companies to build networks as fast as possible.

I suppose saying "build the Internet" is a bit overkill -- the procols were in place, and there was a large, working network. Building the infrastructure that lets the thing exist today, and makes it available to everyone, though....it isn't just an academic tool, or a tool used for a couple of UNIX geeks to chat via talk.

Also, I think defining it as building the Web is a little too harsh. The Web *did* happen to get popularized around the same time, but it certainly wasn't because the government was directly pushing Web browsing.

Re:Al helped build the Intenet

[Zeinfeld]

I really don't think Al Gore or anybody in the federal government was all that crucial in "producing" or "building" the Internet after 1993 (start of the Clinton/Gore administration). The Internet was alive and thriving and widespread (in the U.S. anyway) back in the late 80's -- I used it all the time for email via my CompuServe account in 1990, for example.

That would have been when Gore was Senator for Tennessee and lead the committee that gave funding to the NSFnet at that time. Gore was involved with the Internet when it was still the ARPAnet.

Heck, Gore was involved when we were still having problems with AT&T trying to stop us sending packet data over the telephone system because they saw packet data as competition to circuit switching.

In 1990 the email you sent to an 'Internet' would most likely have travelled over the NSF supported backbone. In addition NSF picked up the tab to run the DNS system, IANA and a lot of other infrastructure we needed.

Today of course those services are all supported on a commercial basis but anyone involved in the transition process knew that Gore was calling the shots. The civil service view at the time was that the administration should simply wait for OSI networking to take off. Tom Kalil and Jock Gill spent a lot of time knocking heads together on that one.

Although the Web grew quickly in academia we did not make much impact in the commercial world outside the computing industry until after whitehouse.gov went online. Afterwards it was like someone had turned on a lightswitch.

To be fair there were also Republicans who were very helpful. Newt Gingrich made a lot of enemies setting up the Congressional Web site. However the people who smeared Gore were the same folk who did Newt's political career in.

Re:Al helped build the Intenet

[jdcook]

Al Gore never claimed to have invented the Internet. He said "During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet." And more than any other national office holder he promoted the devlopment of what we now call the Internet beyond the borders of Computer Science departments. Basically, my beef is that he didn't misspeak. He was deliberately misquoted.

gps or moving IPs

[Anonymous Coward]

Dr. Cerf,

do you believe that the proliferation of internet will give rise to numerous GPS/IP points of contacts for each person, object, etc? I could see a myriad uses for this technology, real time tracking of people, real time product distribution, etc. There are obviously privacy issues but is there anyone in the industry developing prodcuts or solutions for this market?

Re:gps or moving IPs

[Theodore Logan]

That would be the "positioning industry." It is already worth billions and is estimated to give rise to hundred thousands of jobs in the next few years. I personally helped develop such software about a year ago. Almost all the biggies are into it. Here is Sweden one can already enjoy many of these services if signed up with the biggest cell phone operator (Telia).

Do a google ferchrissake. No need to bother Cerf with stuff you could ask any geek of the street.

RFC's and OS's

[strredwolf]

Unix has always been helpful with the invention of the Internet as well as it's implimentation, from the first versions from AT&T all the way to Linux, all the BSDs, and more. With the continuing work, will further technologies be enhanced now that we have the free/open sourced Unix implementations? As is, I belive we have a working IP6 stack in Linux.

What do you think about Anonymnity?

[Planesdragon]

Although there's a certain moral argument to an individual's right to privacy, there's also a statistical argument that people simply act irresponsibly when given anonymnity.

What's your take on anonymnity in the internent? Is a good thing? A bad thing? Just a thing not worth talking about?

Re:What do you think about Anonymnity?

[Telastyn]

I'd argue that statement is a falicy. When anonymous, or more accurately, faced with the ability to do or say something with no recourse possible just means that people will act while being constrained by only their own moral principles.

The fact that most people are irresponsible, and generally assholes when constrained only by their own moral princples shouldn't be terribly suprising.

Re:What do you think about Anonymnity?

[Planesdragon]

The fact that most people are irresponsible, and generally assholes when constrained only by their own moral princples shouldn't be terribly suprising.

It isn't... but most of the time, people ARE restrained by more than just abstract morals.

Re:What do you think about Anonymnity?

[Twylite]

Actually there is a significant amount of research into the phenomena which sees people lose or relax social and/or moral control when given anonymity.

The opportunity to vent destructive behaviour otherwise unacceptable in society is a coping mechanism employed by some people. It is often done in a (socially) harmless manner - yelling in your own back yard, hitting walls, going to gym - but occaionally people go "over the edge".

Anonymity brings the edge closer: it seems that people are just naturally more destructive when they cannot be held accountable.

At the core of the whole problem is that a society cannot exist with true anonymity. Society requires the ability to identify individuals who are acting against society.

Hindsight

[skywalker107]

Hindsight being 20/20. What is the #1 thing you would change about the internet if you could go back to the early days?

Dan Bricker

Re:Hindsight

[mblase]

My bet, or at least opinion, would be the way IP address have been allocated in chunks to certain holders, forcing the proposal of IPv6 [ipv6.org] far sooner than it should have needed to be. I doubt there was any way the shortage of IPv4 addresses could have been foreseen way back when every household on earth still only needed one telephone line.

Re:Hindsight

[Winged Cat]

What would be the #1 thing you could change about the Internet today, if you somehow gained temporary total control over every machine with an IP address and every address-less router? (Besides, of course, making it impossible for anyone to get total control ever again, even at the cost of your own control.)

So should we really say

[utexaspunk]

that we are "Cerf"ing the net? (sorry, i had to say it)

DRM?

[GreyWolf3000]

What is your perspective on DRM? Specifically, do you think that the Fritz chip, Palladium, and lobbying of the MPAA/RIAA, will change the Internet fundamentally? Can the Internet be tamed at this point? If so, do you find this DRM and such to infringe upon fair use? Is there legitamacy to the common fear that in the future, computers themselves, in order to gain access to the Internet, will have so many restrictions that the Internet itself will begin to suffer from it?

How?

[I_am_Rambi]

Two questions....

1)Did you ever work with Al Gore? (not really a question)
2)How would we tansmit (speeds, reliability, etc) from Mars to Earth? To me it seems that with solar flares and metors, reliability would be low. Also how will you be able to get a reliable test of connection from Earth to Mars? How would we test this connection without being on Mars?

Better place?

[pubjames]

Do you think the Internet has changed the world? Is it now a better place?

Re:Better place?

[unicron]

Follow up question: Has fire made this a better world, and how do you feel about the wheel and agriculture?

Commercial Email's Early Days

[ekrout]

As vice president of MCI Digital Information Services from 1982-1986, you led the engineering of MCI Mail, the first commercial email service to be connected to the Internet.

As most engineers know, we have to make some sacrifices with every project and get rid of certain features that we had hoped would be there but cannot due to monetary constraints, etc.

Could you explain some of the more difficult decisions you had to make as the head of this particular project? Moreover, was there ever a point in the project where no one thought the final product was viable?

Thanks.

Do you use AOL Instant Messenger? [bucknell.edu]

Re:Commercial Email's Early Days

[richie2000]

was there ever a point in the project where no one thought the final product was viable?

Having worked with MCI Mail, at least indirectly, I would think that it would be easier to mention the person who thought it was viable. He would be one of the first to be stood up against the wall when the revolution comes. Along with Bill, a bundle of his more enthusiastic minions, the guy who invented muzac, the original Kilroy, both Bushes, Osama and his gang of merry martyrs, Hilary Rosen, Jack Valenti, the Dell guy and...

OK, so we need a really, really big wall - big deal - there's one in China.

Taming the Spam

[Hanno]

you led the engineering of MCI Mail, the first commercial email service to be connected to the Internet.

On a related note...

Spam is growing out of control and many
administrators now consider SMTP/email to
be broken by design.

Did the problem of unsolicited email, forged
addresses and falsified mail headers ever occur
in the early design of SMTP/email?

What was the opinion on internet abuse and
forgery back in the early days?

Do you think there is a possibility to replace
SMTP with a new design?

IP vs. IP?

[Lumpish Scholar]

What do you see happening over the next few years in the battle between the Internet Protocol community (computing/telecom hardware manufacturers, service providers, users) and the Intellectual Property industry (RIAA/MPAA/etc.)?

TCP/IP

[sdjunky]

considering your work with TCP/IP protocols what would you change now that you can look back retrospectively to how it has been used/misused. What would you incorporate into designs now that weren't even thought of at the time that TCP/IP was created?

On a related note...

[0x0d0a]

What, if any, enhanced form of QoS would you have included in TCP/IP?

What about NAT?

[swb]

Most people that I run into in the corporate IT world all know/love/use NAT (network address translation). However, as much as NAT conserves IP addresses and provides a measure of inbound-connection security, I've also seen it be the cause many problems because too many sites that have to interconnect are running overlapping IP space. This isn't even counting the number of tools or protocols that have been broken by NAT (even if they're "fixed" in smarter versions of NAT that know layer 3 or 4 protocols; eg traceroute, ftp).

Since the IP protocols were originally built around the idea of unique addresses, I'm wondering if you think NAT has been a beneficial kludge or a curse. Do you think IP should have been had a built-in NAT mechanism allowing for a more protocol-friendly NAT?

Will the (eventual) adoption of the larger address space of IPv6 lead to the elimination of NAT? Should it?

Negatives of the 'Net

[Dirk Pitt]

Of all the Internet has evolved to be, in what aspect of it are you the most disappointed?

Largest Milestone

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the beginning the net has been ever-evolving by leaps and bounds. What single innovation/technology do you think has had the most profound effect on the net as a whole?

(i.e.: xml, php/asp, etc...)

WWW

[FreeLinux]

It brought the net to the masses.

Changing the 'Net

[bytesmythe]

I would like to know what thing you would change in the modern Internet that you think would make it better. Less regulation? A different protocol? A method of removing vulnerable points to eliminate certain types of network-based attacks? Built-in encryption? Or something else entirely that most users haven't even dreamed up yet?

Question

[CrazyDuke]

What do you think about big media corporations attempting to wrest control of the internet away from the rest of the world?

My question

[andyring]

Mr. Cerf, in light of the copyright battles, DMCA, legal battles, etc., surrounding organizations like RIAA, MPAA, etc., as well as the increasing popularity of broadband and wireless, what do you see the Internet as in five years?

The most surprising thing?

[zero1101]

Of all of the surprising uses that people have invented for the Internet, which surprised you the most (good or bad)?

Beyond Internet

[Ektanoor]

No matter the hype, the pros and cons, the rather primitive, raw and clumsy IP protocol proved its way. And the most fantastic is that its broadcast nature, what some people considered a drawback, proved to be one of its main advantages. We have seen it covering the whole world, proving its ideology on wars (well IP was a DoD protocol for a war situation wasn't it?) and even reaching Mars. However this same primitive, raw and clumsy nature keeps on... And we see lots of troubles on security, performance and reliability. It seems that even Mars is something harder for IP to reach.

Well, is IP protocol The Wheel? And is will this wheel be always a near-round polygon with several holes on it? Isn't any avenue of future for a better protocol? Will we see "ping Mars - timeout, timeout, timeout, timeout - 48 minutes - Mars pinged 80% lost packets" as a common reality?

Where Wizards Stay Up Late

[Tim Fraser]

If you could revise Hafner and Lyon's book "Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet", what changes would you make?

- Tim

Disappointment?

[Lumpish Scholar]

The Internet has moved from a research project to a part of mainstream life in less than a decade. Even the "Digital Divide" has turned out to be less of a problem than feared, with most schools and libraries (at least in the U.S.) providing access to anyone who wants it. Pretty impressive.

But what about the development of the Internet has disappointed you? Commercial dominance? Trivialization of the new resource? "Digital Divide"? Security problems? The Microsoft monoculture? The hype of the bubble circa 1999?

IP Addresses

[SexyKellyOsbourne]

In the earlier days, did you ever think that 32 bits for IP addressing would eventually not be enough for everybody?

IPv6?

[Lumpish Scholar]

IPv6 holds solutions to many of the problems the Internet faces today; but it's still almost exclusively an IPv4 world out there. The usual vicious cycle applies: no one wants to support it until it's widely used, and no one wants to use it until it's widely supported. How, and when, do you see this logjam being broken up?

Re:IPv6?

[nick_davison]

Vint answered this at a presentation I saw him give about two years ago. The answer isn't going to appeal to the slashdot masses though:

[Paraphrased]"Realistically, IPv6 is necessary but it isn't going to happen until Microsoft move their Operating Systems to support it."

Re:IPv6?

[joib]

I think win XP supports IPv6. Of course it will be a while until a sizeable part of windows machines will be XP or newer.

Your most surprising personal use?

[Lumpish Scholar]

I never thought I'd be able to e-mail my mother. I never though I'd be able to access the public library's "card" catalog from home. I never thought there'd be a more compelling screen than my television set for wasting time.-)

How do you find yourself using the Internet, in ways that would have surprised you a decade ago?

Internet Survival

[beebware]

It is a long time rumor that the Arpanet (the predecessor to the current day Internet) was designed to survive a nuclear attack which could "disable" a number of nodes. However, taking into account changes which have had to happen with the evolution of the Internet (for example, the closure of 'open relay mail servers' which could have 'bounced' the email around 'dead or unreachable nodes', plus the 'sudden' closure of major backbone providers such as KPNQwest) - do you think the Internet could still survive a major 'node failure'?

Internet Governace

[cleetus]

The internet, in order to work even at the most basic technical level, needs some standards; some governace. What do you think is the proper scope of that governace/standard setting, who are the constituents, and what are the proper mechanisms for governing?

How do they differ from what we have to day? On the whole, are you optimistic or pessimistic about all this?

Internet vs. Interweb

[bsDaemon]

How do you feel about the proliferation of the "web" and how it has more or less overshadowed "the internet" for the vast majority of the "wired" portion of humanity? Has the amount of frivilous crap that has been allowed to flow over the wires benefitted or people or not, verses if the internet was still just for scientists and students and was restricted to services such as connecting computers for colaberative use and sharing of files that no one is going to get sued over?

filters?

[Triv]

Seeing how there's so much interesting information to be found on the net ('interesting' being good or bad, depending), what do you think about mandatory filtering on public (library, etc) computers? Whose responsability is it to decide what we can and can't see?

Triv

What about ICANN?

[Pyromage]

What's your take on the ICANN events? The elections, the resolution protocols, etc.? Do you think they are an effective body?

Re:What about ICANN?

[catfood]

Do you know runs [icann.org] ICANN?

parasitic computing and ai

[nounderscores]

Dear Dr Cerf

Last year, Jay Brockman and colleagues at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana sent out packets with carefully crafted checksums such that only the packet with the checksum which solved their mathematical problem returned an ack packet.

article here [nature.com]

this kind of distributed brute force search could be useful in the huge search spaces of ai.

Furthermore, instead of a single computer pretending it is a neural network, a different application of distributed parasitic computing could allow a network of computers to be tricked into having each computer spend a few clock cycles pretending it is a neuron.

Would you support the development future network protocols which encourage these kind of facilities?

Thanks

What's next?

[Remus Shepherd]

Not necessarily what you're working on next (although that would be interesting), but what do you think might be the next really big thing? What will be the next technological achievement to affect all of humanity? Are there any projects out there that are still small, like the internet was in the 70's and 80's, but which you believe may mushroom into a world-changing invention?

Advancing to the next phase

[jACL]

In a recent presentation with John Chambers of Cisco, he claimed that streaming media on demand, and therefore, digital rights protection was necessary to grow the Internet into the next phase. Many other people have the idea that the computer and the television should merge before the Internet will "advance."

Others take the Sony approach: the Internet will advance when we can use it as a facilitator -- such as being able to store photos or video from handheld cameras to servers, or access it from cell phones and PDAs for messaging and Bluetooth-type functionality.

Are there other approaches that you've seen (or considered!) for utilization of the Internet that don't head down these two widely-touted avenues?

OSI vs. TCP/IP

[bluestar]

TCP/IP was originally designed as interim solution until OSI could be finished. When do you expect that to happen?

Oh, heck, I'll ask a question.

[Latent IT]

I never ask a question. I want to ask a question.

When you were doing all the initial work, putting things together, and figuring out how things 'should' be, did you ever consider how easy it would become?

I mean, did you ever in your wildest dreams imagine AOL, or something like it? Instant Messaging, Plug and Play, and everything else? To me, back in the good old days (tm) the obfuscation of computer networking was a boon, even in the early '90's. Like Usenet before 1996. I'll admit to enjoying things maybe a bit more when everyone and their grandmother didn't contribute to discussions with one sided opinions in all caps.

So, I guess it's a to part question - did you ever imagine it becoming so easy, and do you wish it had stayed harder?

Distributed Computing

[Loki_1929]

What do you think about Distributed.net [distributed.net] and other distributed computing projects that utilize the internet? At any point during your work before the mid-90's, did you ever invision such a concept as distributed computing over a worldwide inter-network being a viable alternative to expensive supercomputers?

Building on that last question, did you at any time consider the possibility of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against a single host on the inter-network, or against the inter-network as a whole? If so, what, if any safeguards did you consider implementing to protect against such problems?

Creators of the Internet

[cperciva]

Another person often dubbed "creator of the internet" was Jon Postel. How would you compare your role with his; and, if you can answer such a loaded question, if the internet had to be invented without one of you, which person (not being involved) would constitute a greater loss?

When the Digital Pearl Harbor happens...

[Rogerborg]

The Secret Service/NSA/FBI/CIA assure us that evil criminal masterminds and cyberterrorists are poised to take down the internet and cripple the global economy at any moment. Given the accuracy of their past predictions, this too will surely come to pass. When it does, the government will need a scapegoat, and fast. I think we know who that will be.

My question is: where do you plan to hide, what psueodonym will you adopt, and will you be travelling in company with Al Gore?

Don't worry, we won't tell them. This is just between you and us.

Which term do you hate more?

[gosand]

Which term do you hate more:

Information Superhighway

Cyberspace

Letter from John Gilmore

[Evro]

Did you ever respond to this message from John Gilmore [icannwatch.org], which asks why you sided against Karl Auerbach, who (to the best of my knowledge) sought to gain access to ICANN's financial documents? From what I can tell, ICANN's only motivation is to make ICANN more influential (i.e. for its directors to line their own pockets). Given that ICANN is technically a nonprofit organization, this doesn't seem very ethical. Anyhow, the email text is below:

Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 14:26:26 -0800
From: John Gilmore
Subject: Re: ICANN: Auerbach's Allegations Off Target
To: [e-mail], [e-mail]

> "Karl paints this as a dispute between him and ICANN management, but
> nothing could be further from the truth," noted Board chairman Vint Cerf.
> "ICANN management is merely carrying out its obligation to follow the
> wishes of the Board as a whole rather than follow the dictates of any
> single Director."

Hi, Vint.

I haven't wanted to disrupt our friendship, so I've held off a long time in telling you what I think about how you are leading ICANN. That's why this message is a little longer than it needs to be; I'm saying things that I've been bottling up for a while.

I don't want to be considered a friend of what you now stand for.

You are on the wrong side of this issue, as you have been on the wrong side of many issues regarding ICANN. If ICANN has secrets about who it is doing backdoor favors with, those *should* be made public. And you, as Chairman, as the most prominent and trusted board member, and as the architect of the openness that should still be in the Internet, should have been way ahead of Karl Auerbach in making them public.

Even if those secrets are never made public, or even if there are no terrible secrets inside ICANN, the activities of ICANN MUST be available to every person on the Board of Directors. Without restriction, without delay, without subversion. By law, and for good reasons.

You have been a rubber stamp for many corrupt ideas out of Network Solutions, Verisign and ICANN ever since your election. When I complained to you in the past, such as when the NSI contract was amended to give them a perpetual monopoly, you said that there was nothing else that you could do. I disagreed with that sentiment then, and I disagree with it now. You could have left the contract the way it was, rather than amend it. You don't even have to make things better to keep my respect; you could keep things from getting worse. But you continue to choose to make things worse. Now you are defending ICANN's lack of openness even with its own elected directors!

ICANN was created to promise openness, transparency, accountability, and competition. It has provided none of those, and actively works every month to reduce what little it has provided. You have worked with it to eliminate, rather than create, those promises.

Opening whatever squirming can of worms that is calling the shots at ICANN is what is needed. I can see that ICANN management is terrified that directors from outside the old-boy network might actually find out the details of what ICANN does day by day. They have eliminated any future threat of that, by eliminating outside directors after this term. And they are delaying the current directors' access to information, in the hope that they can permanently avoid outside scrutiny.

I've been a director of several California corporations. I've read that part of the law myself. I've invoked it in a couple of occasions. I contributed significant funding for Karl's lawsuit. Karl is right and you and the ICANN staff are wrong. And now I find you lying about it in a press release. "ICANN management is merely carrying out its obligation to follow the wishes of the Board as a whole..." ICANN *management* instigated those policies, the board didn't. The board has never even considered them.

Virtually everyone at EFF has been looking for ways that we could help to open ICANN and get it to do what it was chartered to do. I've had to hold them back for years, telling them that participation was a waste of our scarce time -- and that no matter how much time they put in, ICANN would have to get really bad before it would ever get better. I put two years of my own life into the domain-name issues, with CORE. It became clear that the strings were being pulled behind the scenes, because the right answers were relatively obvious, yet the wrong answers got approved, providing billions of dollars of benefit to certain parties with heavy ties to the US military. Rather than ICANN making open decisions and using transparent processes, whoever pulls those strings is still controlling what happens. But under ICANN, the process is even murkier and further hidden from public scrutiny. And you're helping.

All the way back at the start of ICANN, EFF and I proposed amendments that would provide a "Bill of Rights" and a "Sunshine Act" and a "Freedom of Information Act" in ICANN's Bylaws. These were all summarily rejected. ICANN does not give a damn about the fundamental rights of citizens or Internet users. It does not want to operate in. the sunshine. And it does not want information about what it's doing to be made available even to its own directors, let alone to the public. Give me one good reason why such an organization should get even a millisecond more of your support -- or anyone's.

The law gives directors an "absolute right" because directors exist to be INDEPENDENT OF and SUPERIOR TO the management. Each and every director has a separate duty to the company; each one carries it out in their own. way. The Board cannot prevent any board member from merely inquiring into the state of the company. The Board cannot condition any board member's inquiry on agreement to a set of arbitrary terms. Nor can the management. This is not only a good idea -- it's the law.

ICANN is going down, one way or another. Either it will go down like East Germany, with a peaceful transition to governance responsive to the public will, or it will go down like Japan, with big bombs dropped on it. ICANN has lost all semblance of credibility and merely seeks to entrench its unaccountable power.

I have absolutely no idea what you are doing leading that megalomaniac, unaccountable, unresponsive, anti-expression, anti-public-interest organization. Did they take your kids hostage? Did you sell your soul for a mess of pottage? What hold do they have over you?

I used to think much better of you than this, Vint. You can see that even now I'm grasping at straws rather than believe that YOU are one of the megalomaniacs. But the evidence continues to pile up, and I'm afraid it's true. I don't want to be the friend of such a person. I'll see you from the other side of the courtroom. Bye.

John

Please mod parent up

[catfood]

Someone please mod parent up. I want to see VC's answer to this.

Re:Letter from John Gilmore

[Jim Tyre]

To my knowlege, he never responded; and as a friend of John and one of Karl's lawyers, it's likely that I would know if he had.

OTOH, ICANN tried to use the letter against Karl in the court case. Properly, the court ruled that John's letter could not be attributed to Karl - without regard to whether Karl agreed with what John said.

Re:Letter from John Gilmore

[JasonUCF]

He probably has not responded to it, and even so, they won't give this question to him.

John Gilmore was not seeking a response. The time for that has long passed.

This is Mr. Gilmore going 'RASPBERRY!! THBPPPTTTTTPTTTT!!' it's an up raised arm at a 90 degree angle with a hand on the upper arm. It's not a call for a debate, it's a last ditch "Hey buddy, screw you, you suck."

Not that I DISAGREE with Mr. Gilmore about the state of ICANN, just the idea of this being a request for dialog. ICANN is going to be dragged down to its knees, pompous and proud the whole way.

Pehaps we could rephrase the question?

[beleg777]

That's a little bit more confrontational than necessary. Perhaps if we were to ask in more civil terms we might get a reasonable response? Perhaps something like this.

ICANN is seen from the outside as a self-serving and counterproductive entity. Given your support of it, I assume you disagree. Can you give us some reasons to see differently? Perhaps explain why ICANN has such a bad public image, and why the public is wrong on these things. Why has the increasingly unanimous need for reform been ignored? How can the public come to trust ICANN if ICANN won't trust the public with information about their business?

IP address shortage?

[thogard]

Is the IP address shortage a real technical problem or is it simply a managment issue thats hiding under the excuse that "routers can't cope with large route tables" combined with our current routing infastructure?

Evolutionary vs. Revolutionary Change

[north.coaster]

In the future, so you see the Internet envolving in a evolutionary fashion, or are revolutionary changes in store?

/Don

The Man

[photon317]

One the one hand, you're well-respected in technical circles for your engineer efforts in the early days of the internet, and generally thought of as a correct and forward-thinking person. On the other hand, you were employed for most of recent history (perhaps still?) by MCI/WorldCom, who've been accused of being shortsighted in many ways, and not very true to the spirit of the net. How do you reconcile these things? Do you have any say or sway?

Ten Years from Now...

[north.coaster]

In ten years, do you think that the average person's use of the Internet will be similar to today, or will it be drastically different?

/Don

IPv6?

[Ransak]

We've heard the hype and the 'plans' to move to IPv6 for years now, but the USA seems fairly complacent at IPv4. Do you see IPv6 becoming a reality in the near future (2 to 3 years), and from a high perspective, what do you think (besides the obvious running out of addresses) could spur the movement? Or should we not move at all, and depend on network address translation more?

Internet and the Web

[Theatetus]

How do you feel about the fact that many people think of the World Wide Web and the Internet as the same thing?

Email, FTP and even chat protocols seem to be more and more mediated by an HTTP interface. Is this just the price of making the 'Net available to more people, or do you think there is a chance for a non WWW or WWW-workalike to get significant public use?

long term

[mulcher]

What progress is being made in architecting security in the Internet in regards to protocol 'attacks' and global traffic shaping?

Any comments on the Whitehouse Cybersecurity proposal released last week?

Voice?

[Lumpish Scholar]

There are a lot of efforts related to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). How do you see them going? Will SIP rule the roost? Is the wireline "plain old telephone service" phone going to be obsolete any time soon, at home, at work, or both? Will VoIP look like part of the Internet to the consumer, or will it be part of the obscure infrastructure?

So...

[0xdeadbeef]

What's up with that WorldCom thing? Did you personally get burned by any of this? Are you ashamed to have worked for those people? Do you think it has it damaged the credibility of the Internet?

And in your opinion, what is it about ICANN that causes people to hate it so vehemently? Is it justified?

Open Source Movement?

[FortKnox]

The internet has brought many people together to do anything from games to clubs. But one of the largest unities brought together was the Open Source movement. Did you ever fathom the idea that developers around the world would unite to share source code and develop major applications (ie - linux) that is free for all?
What are your views of the Open Source Movement?

Porn and Scams and Cons

[unicron]

How do you feel about the internet going from a place of knowledge, beauty, and limitless potential to a place of Porn, Scams, and Cons? Geez, often times you can get all 3 at one site. I would think this polution of your idea to such an extent leaves a bad taste in your mouth, I know it does mine.

Subject to carrier terms

[BadDoggie]

Back only twenty years ago, serious programming was more often done on leased, timed connections and computations were batched. Boeing was not thrilled that I was able to do a lot of the dirty work at home for comparatively nothing once there was a COBOL package for the Atari 800.

Now, some software firms, primarily under the banner of "fighting piracy" are looking again to the pay-to-play model and trying to implement this sort of system, most notably in the .NET framework. While the initial outlay for users may be much smaller (since software packages don't need to be purchased in bulk up-front), the long-term strategy is to bring in more money to the software creator.

However, personal computers are too powerful and there are too many people interested in having software which works locally -- obtained by paying a one-time fee or nothing at all -- that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to force people and companies back into the old model.

The Internet is another matter. Computer systems used to run exclusively locally. Thanks to the work by you and your peers, where it used to be near-impossible to hook up a couple VAXes together, it became possible to link more and more computers together into the Net we have today.

Political and corporate forces are attempting to divide and control this behemoth. While the first round of attempts in the form of the dot-bomb craze failed spectacularly in commercialising and segmenting the Net, a new wave is having much more success. The Great Firewall of China and damnable legislation is cutting access. Further attempts to force hardware manufacturers to make controls available continue.

Unlike software, which has been commoditised, carrier and connection are services which cross state and national borders. Furthermore, where there are few barriers to entry in the software field, a common carrier requires incredible up-front infrastructure. Hence, there are few major carriers, all of which are regulated by both domestic and foreign governments.

It is therefore rather unlikely, even with some clever hacks such as Triangle Boy [safeweb.com], that a return to closed loops and segments is unavoidable if the proponents are prepared to work at it, which they seemingly are.

What do you think about these developments? If your feeling is that they are anathema to the purpose of the Net (which was initially a defensive weapon and never meant to be what it has become), do you see any solutions beyond lobbying of Congressmen, which won't happen for the simple reason that the users are too dispersed as compared to those organised and deep-pocketed who would strongly control the Net?

woof.

third world access

[martin]

We seem to have a world of internet have and have nots.

The biggest set of have nots are still those who have not in respect of anything (the third world). We have the 'ring of fire' around Africa, but that's only really useful for the countries with a shoreline. Do you think your efforts for intra-planet internet-working would help to provide better satellite based access for making ISP's cheaper.

Taking it to Mars?

[Hoi Polloi]

Is the internet's biggest need right now adding a couple of interplanetary satellites to the net (very glamorous of course) or making it more secure, decreasing abuse (i.e. spam), and increasing access to high-speed connections? I'd say people's time, $, and energy would be better spent on less flashy but far more useful endeavors such as those.

Sounds like Mr. Cerf has reached the dabbling stage of his career.

Policing the internet.

[inputsprocket]

Dr Cerf,

As more and more crimes become committed on the internet, what is your take on how it should be policed?

Should the law of the country where the servers are held be applied, or the law of the country of the guilty party?

Who should be the police?

XML

[jhines0042]

TCP/IP was invented as a way of connecting disparate networks together. It has succeeded in this goal quite admirably.

XML has a similar goal. It has been used to connecting companies together who have different internal processes.

With web services and the explosion of XML based standards, what thoughts do you have on wether or not XML will succeed? What are its strengths and shortcomings when put along side of TCP/IP?

So...

[bloo9298]

Did you design the Internet for p0rn or mp3s?

An internet of the people, or for the people?...

[tekrat]

Back when the internet (as we now it) was being developed, it was a government military project.

However, after the internet revolution (of the early 90's) freed it from being Arpa-Net, we had a "golden age" where anyone could connect, and anyone with enough technical know-how could run a server and become a permanent part of the system.

But now we see a day looming in the future where large media conglomerates control it all through draconian service agreements that dis-allow private individuals to run servers in their homes, as well as "linking lawsuits", and patents of obvious business methods, all resulting in an internet where the vast majority of the people can only passively view information rather than interactively take part in providing information.

Do you think it's a "good thing" for everyone to run servers (an internet of the people), or do you believe that it's better for the government and corporations to control the flow of information to citizens (an internet for the people).

While it seems an obvious choice, remember that the situation we have now, where the internet is the "wild west" and mailboxes are littered with spam, and internet rumours become accidental news stories, is a direct result of an internet "of the people".

So there are pros and cons either way. Basically the question boils down to "do you prefer the wild west" versus "do you prefer a controlled, moderated internet?"

IETF and ICANN

[rich_salz]

The IETF is an amazingly transparent organization that has consistently "delivered the goods" with almost no back-room politics. ICANN [icann.org] is its exact opposite [icannwatch.org], perhaps reaching a nadir when one of its own board members had to sue to see the financial records. Why doesn't ICANN operate in a completely transparent manner? Do you feel the slightest bit uncomfortable with its policies and procedures? Given your background, Welch's comments in the McCarthy Army hearings [gmu.edu] come to mind.

Software Patents

[ch-chuck]

Do you think your work would have benefitted from consideration of "Software Patents" or would it have been an incumberance and distraction? Would you have liked to have patents on the Internet so that every node or packet would have to pay royalities? Even if it would have made you (or, more likely, your employer) 'Richer n' Bill'? Lastly, any thoughts on the One-Click-Purchase Patent?

No Selfish Naming

[dbretton]

So why didn't you dub it the Vinternet?

]

The internet and spam

[MrIcee]

I'm sure that when you helped to shape the early internet that you didn't anticipate current use, or even the explosion of use.

And, I'm sure you find some issues troubling. I would be interested in your views of SPAM. Did you anticipate it? What do you think about it? And do you have any ideas on how it can be managed or controlled (or, better yet, stopped)?

Biggest promise?

[Jeppe Salvesen]

Mr Cerf,

What do you see as the largest promise of improvement of the Internet? Specifically, what would you like the Internet to be in 20 years?

best regards,

Jeppe

Security on the Mars run

[Erbo]

Dr. Cerf, I'm curious to know about what security plans you're considering for the interplanetary network you propose. It's fairly obvious that there has to be something better than present-day Net security involved, otherwise it would be possible for a garden-variety script kiddie to DoS an entire planet (at least to the extent of cutting off its "upstream" link). And might these security plans offer us some possible ways of dealing with network attacks here on Earth as well?

Cerf? Surf? Surfing?

[JeanBaptiste]

Surfing the net? Any relationship there? I cannot think of any other water related metaphors related to the internet... is your name responsible?

Internet amongst the grand scheme of things

[ohboy-sleep]

A number of people that I talk to either consider the internet to be something "just for those computer nerd types", or they think it's the ultimate medium from which all things will eventually derive.

My question is how important a place in society is the internet now, and what do you expect its place to be in the future?

And now something completely different

[hrieke]

What is your favorite meal that your wife cooks?
What is her favorite meal that you cook?
Reciepes?

Spam and E-mail "rights."

[KC7GR]

Dr. Cerf,

I'm curious about your views on a couple of 'hot-button' topics. First, spam and spammers: How would you choose to deal with the problems created by both, assuming you were in a position to dictate such policy?

Second, building on the first question: One of the positions taken by, apparently, many SysAdmins (myself included) is that the ability to send E-mail is a privilege, not a right (just like driving), and that said privilege is revocable on a per-network basis by the specific system's administrator(s) at any time, and for any reason, primarily because the vast majority of hosts that make up the Internet are privately owned and operated.

What is your take on this position? Valid? Invalid? Somewhere in between? Do you see the sending of E-mail being legislated into a "right" in times to come? (My belief is that, if this happens, the 'net will drown in spam in short order as blocklists become outlawed).

Thanks much.

Do you see WiFi as a positive thing?

[crush]

Dr.Cerff would you like to see an expansion of community-run wireless networks and a concommitant addition of bandwidth to the soon-to-be-crowded 2.4 and 5 GHz "free" bandwidths? (This all assumes that you're not happy with how the internet has become dominated by monopolistic cable companies)

Dark Fiber

[bob]

What do you believe is going to happen to all the dark fiber that has been installed by Worldcom and others? It seems clear at this point that fiber networks have been grossly overbuilt, and demand for much, if not most, of this fiber is not about to materialize, at least within the context of current applications and cost structure. In your opinion, does this situation represent a massive loss of investment, or a tremendous opportunity to sell innovative new services, e.g. intercity video teleconferencing links which are cost-competitive with voice-only conferences?

Are innovations that could take advantage of this fiber likely to be stifled as a result of the current dependence of the telecom industry on high bandwidth charges? If this were a pure supply-and-demand situation, one might expect the cost to access dark fiber to sink like a rock until people were willing to pay for it, allowing small, entrepreneurial companies to begin to offer speculative new services. Does all that fiber remain dark only because the small number of fiber owners are unwilling to allow such price declines to happen?

Internet censorship

[autopr0n]

How do you feel about internet censorship in places like China, and Saudi Arabia? Recently the Chinese government began knocking (for a short time) people off the internet who did google searches for politically sensitive terms. Do you feel this is morally wrong? Do you think that it has any chance of succeeding?

Workstations and Timeshare Systems

[okl]

In the early days of the Internet (say, pre-1975), when it consisted of the Arpanet and a few linked networks, the goal of ARPA's funding was to tie together users of timeshare computers. In the last quarter of the twentieth century the Internet has morphed into a vast network of LANs, servers, and personal workstations. Timesharing computers and their users have dropped out of the picture.

You and Kahn were doing your early work on TCP in the same years that the first workstations (at Xerox Parc, for example) were being developed. I'd like to know, if you can remember, when you first began to appreciate the magnitude of this change in the internet user base, and whether this change had any affect on your TCP/IP design work in the late 70s.

Answer

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Cerf has already answered [mids.org] this one. The last two lines are the most telling.

While it is not accurate to say that VP Gore invented Internet, he has played a powerful role in policy terms that has supported its continued growth and application, for which we should be thankful.

We're fortunate to have senior level members of Congress and the Administration who embrace new technology and have the vision to see how it can be put to work for national and global benefit.

It's worth noting that he wrote those words when Clinton was still President and Gore -- you know, the elected President of the United States -- was still VP. Makes me nostalgic for the days when we had an administration that wasn't living in the Dark Ages. [sigh]

Re:Answer

[gowen]

Thats not quite the question I meant. I want to know what he thinks about the fact that the (non)-statement became such a political hot potato(e) during the 2000 campaign; and that it was used to pillory Gore.

Re:Question

[DAldredge]

How is that a misquote? A normal person hearing those words would think that Al "Clipper is wonderful" Gore was claming he invented the Internet.

How else do you parse the words "I took the initative in creating the Internet.">