Q: Dr. Cerf is known far and wide as the "Father of the Internet". Dr Cerf I bid you welcome! Dr Cerf is the Senior Vice President of Internet Architecture and Engineering for MCI Communications Corporation. Dr Cerf is responsible for the development of MCI's Internet backbone, one of the largest Internet networks in the world today. He oversees development and network architecture that enables MCI to provide a combination of video, data, and information services to businesses and consumers. Dr Cerf is the co-inventor of the computer networking protocol that became the language used for Internet communications. Q: Good evening Dr Cerf, I think the first question that comes to mind, is where the nickname "Father of the Internet" came into being? Vinton Cerf: I'm not sure I can put my finger on this but its probably is a a hyperactive public relations story the real story is that Bob Kahn and I, conceived this idea together in 1973 and published its specifications in 1974 I lead the design project and then managed it till 1982 and I took a 4 year leave to build something called MCI mail and then returned to work with bob at a company CNRI I got back into the Internet game in 1986 as a member of the Internet board which I eventually chaired then in 1992 along with some other people I started the Internet society so that title of "father of the Internet" is more so for longevity than anything else Q: Dr Cerf, What experiences and/or ideas early in life do you feel might have spawned the idea of this type media development? Vinton Cerf: I was a chemistry freak around age 10 and enjoyed doing experiments so putting things together to see what would happen was part of my psyche and the Internet is the ultimate tinker toy system Q: Like every parent, Dr Cerf, I'd like to know how you view your "child" today? Is there any aspect of the growth or development of the Internet that has surprised you? And on the same token, is there anything that disappoints you? Vinton Cerf: Yes I think the surprises in the way of growth and variety of applications to which the Internet is put to use the disappointments come in when abuse of the Internet takes place or when legislators misunderstand the technology and try to pass laws that don't make sense Q: I suppose the next obvious question would be what things would you like to see happen in Internet development in the future? Vinton Cerf: first Need is to grow in its capacity to support new Media second is to get IP version 6 deployed so we don't run out of address space Q: Ah an important one indeed Vinton Cerf: and the third to begin work on interactive multimedia applications to explore interactive groups on the Internet Vinton Cerf: one other thing is Good security and means of authentication to support Internet commerce Q: Dr. Cerf, recently we were all faced with proposed legislation on censorship for the Internet. What are your views on this subject? Vinton Cerf: first of all I object to censorship in any form secondly I feel its impossible to sensor the Internet because there are so many sources of content world wide I do agree though that some technology is needed to allow parents and teachers to limit what their children reach on the Internet if they wish but I advise parents to work on their kids Wetware (Brain) to teach them the difference between quality information and Junk Q: Do you feel that we are heading in the right direction with the current "kiddie Blockers" Dr Cerf? Vinton Cerf: Actually No the reason they are too complicated for most parents to configure so I think we will have to find ways to simplify the Mechanism. Q: In your opinion sir, do you feel that in the future governments might find a way to "tax" or otherwise reap revenue from the "airwaves", and if so, how do you think this may effect the growth or development of this medium? Vinton Cerf: This is a Extremely good question President Clinton recently released a report on a frame work for Internet commerce and in that report he said that the Internet should not be taxed or subject to tariff at least for now there is good reason for that in the U.S. alone there are 30,000 taxing authorities you can imagine what it would be like to be a ISP trying to figure out how much to collect in taxes and who to deliver them too and how to calculate them and then it gets worse on a global scale so for now a tariff and tax free Internet is still growing. Q: Dr Cerf, Speaking of the future, and I know many of us are intrigued with this, what are your feelings about the Y2K issue? Do you think there will be an "easy fix" for the problem? Vinton Cerf: No there are no millions of Lines of code that have to be examined to ferret out Y2K bugs for the most part the underlying Internet technology is probably free of Y2K bugs except for programs or protocols that need time stamping and there are some Domain name servers with their expiration dates for domain name entry and probably some data collection software in the Net work management sections so we probably have some work to do in the guts of the network to say nothing of the application level. Q: Here in TalkCity, sir, we have for the most part established an actual virtual community. Do you see the Internet possibly becoming a tool for better world relations and understanding ? Do you believe that governments could seek to guide the "child" in a detrimental way? Vinton Cerf: that's a very complex question first off I would hope the Internet will promote cultural understanding and communication around the world but anyone who has been caught in a Email Flame fest knows that this technology can equally as well create misunderstandings. Our Job collectively is to see to it that this technology is used more for more constructive purposes that promote world peace and economic prosperity and doesn't get abused to create detrimental situations Q: Dr Cerf, we find in TalkCity more and more young folks who are interested in and advancing toward computer related media careers. What advice would you share with them to help themselves realise their goals? Vinton Cerf: First off get on the net and get as much experience as you can second Don't be afraid to try something different most of the real neat idea's for new Internet applications come from people who do things that don't make much business sense on the server but later prove to be economic engines for instance the Internet. Q: Excellent example ;) -=Q&A=- Kriss> Dr Cerf, do you believe the net should be anonymous, or not? Vinton Cerf: I think anonymity has its place but many transactions are useless unless the parties know who is involved example if you place a order you might want it delivered to where you can get it, where ever that is you Might want your name on it, Most correspondence seems more satisfying when you know with whom your talking to AmitC> How did a network that was primarily aimed for military usage... evolve into becoming a network that connected the entire world (and not used for military usage!! Other than MILNET i.e.)? Vinton Cerf: first of all one reason it was designed by a computer Scientist at university's for research labs who were not focused solely on the military applications I would like to point out that the Internet is used very heavily by the Military as the Gulf war illustrates but the network has vastly outgrown its initial origins and we enjoy that every day Donya> I read that you spent a lot of time crashing the Arpanet, do you think there is any chance of this one crashing? Vinton Cerf: Yes Donya but its more robust than the Apanet was mikeg> What are your thoughts on the effects the popularisation of the Internet has had in the general quality of its content. Vinton Cerf: The content is going to vary depending on the interest of the Internet users there is always going to be more variety on the Internet than any other medium if there is a economic opportunity for high quality content prep we will see increasing value of much content but there will still be room for content which is freely contributed and will therefore have quiet varied quality Pete> What is the #1 programming language used Vinton Cerf: Pete I'm not sure I'm capable of answering that question but I'm pretty sure its not Java, I would guess variations of C and C++ are the most used Damon> when sun create oak what was their intention ? Vinton Cerf: I think that question would be better asked of Eric Schmitt Vinton Cerf: but I think they were looking for a Language which would allow distributed programming to work more readily but you should really follow up with Jim Gosling or Eric Schmitt AmitC> What are the structural advancements of the Internet that will take place, you foresee in the near future and do you see a possible usage of the Internet that is currently going unused or is being underused? Vinton Cerf: Yes AmitC first of all the Internet is undergoing a Major change as we cope with real time services the provision of Mulitiple classes of service will shape the Internet over the next decade second the cost of implementing the Internet protocols will drop rapidly as we put them into hardware we all ready have chips that will do Internet protocols at 11 million packets per sec and now the industry is looking at cheap Internet protocol chips for the control of various appliances so the next major innovations will be in the multimedia applications and in household items that become part of the net Donya> Will Java play any roll in the development of the new protocol or will it strictly still be TCP/IP? Is Java only a language or can it be considered a protocol? Vinton Cerf: Java is not a protocol but it is a implementation language and it will be used to implement protocols the lay above the IP layer of course it can also be used to implement IP itself daspoo> Dr Cerf Q. is there a limit to the packet sizes used with TCP/IP? for instance I use 16384; is this over-kill? Vinton Cerf: OK the answer is yes if you are transmitting over relatively low speed lines or high error rate lines however for gigabit speed networking 15k bytes maybe too small Kriss> Which platform, from a TCP side of view, do you think implements it the best.. the free *nixes, or the commercial other OS', and which of 'em do you think has the best future? Vinton Cerf: first of all I'm not qualified to pass judgement on all platforms that support tcp/ip cause I don't have sufficient detail knowledge of all of them however the UNIX platforms tend to have the best implementation the Microsoft crowd has been showing signs of considerable improvement the best tcp/ip for the IBM compatible platform comes from ftp software AmitC> The newer means of connecting to the Net (Digital Satellite/ADSL/56k modem) have a lower upload to download ratio... Does this mean that Internet multimedia publishing is going to be beyond the normal users control? For e.g. Digital Satellites have only 14.4kbps upload and 400mbps download... does this mean the media wants people to become only viewers rather than multimedia content providers? Vinton Cerf: No first of all there are quiet a range of new access technologies and some of them are symmetric example Hdsl which ranges from a half megabit per second in both directions to as much as 10 megabits per second however we will see use of one way high speed transmissions from digital broadcast satellites and ordinary cable television and those technologies will be used for Internet multicasting.