By
Mark Ollig
Vinton
Cerf recently gave a lecture before the Washington DC chapter of the
Association for Computing Machinery.
Cerf,
along with Robert Khan, developed the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet
Protocol (TCP/IP) networking code, which makes it possible for us to navigate
through the Internet.
During
this lecture, he wore Google Glass.
Google
Glass is worn like a pair of eyeglasses.
As
you may recall from the May 6 column, Google Glass wirelessly connects to the
Internet and has “a small rectangular glass cube display screen, attached to
what looks like an eyeglasses frame.”
Cerf
activated Google Glass’ connection to the Internet using a single finger-tap on
the side of its frame.
“OK
Glass, take a picture,” Cerf commanded. “It just took a picture of this group
of people here,” he said while pointing out into the audience.
Google
Glass will go into full-production in 2014, and is one of the newest devices
being connected to the Internet.
In
1973, when Cerf and Khan were doing the design work for what turned out to be
the Internet we use today, Cerf brought up this question: “How many addresses
should we have on this experimental Internet?”
They
didn’t know the answer, so instead they asked how many computers would there be
per country in the future. Now, we must remember they were discussing this 40
years ago, when computers were large, room-filling, time-sharing mainframes.
There were not many of these around, so they reasoned, “16 million mainframes
per country.” This was a very high number – and one they thought somewhat
excessive.
Next,
they needed to know how many countries there were in the world.
“We
didn’t know because there wasn’t any Google to look it up,” quipped Cerf, as
the audience laughed.
I
assume they eventually figured it out.
Next,
they came up with a maximum length of 32 bits for each individually addressable
device connected to the Internet. An example would be 173.194.77.99. This is an
IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4) address for Google.
IPv4
provided a unique address, (think Zip code) for up to 4,294,967,296 separate
devices connected to the Internet.
It
was Jan. 1, 1983, when the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET)
changed its networking technology to TCP/IP. This date is considered by many to
be when the “modern Internet” was born.
Since
then, Cerf said the Internet has grown by a factor of a million or more.
New
IPv4 addresses became exhausted last June. As a result, much larger 128-bit
addressable IPv6 protocols began being deployed in the routers and servers of
Internet Service Providers (ISP) all across the Internet.
An
example of an IPv6 address is: 2001:0DB8:AC10:FE01:0000:0000:0000:0000.
IPv6
will allow 340 trillion, trillion, trillion, unique device addresses. This is
equal to 340 with 36 zero’s behind it. I learned it also equals 340
undecillion.
Folks,
we should not have to worry about changing out IPv6 for a very long, long time.
“I
used to tell jokes that every light bulb in the world would someday have an IP
address, Cerf mused. I can’t tell jokes about that anymore because somebody
sent me an IPv6 radio enabled LED light bulb.”
He
stated how just about every appliance and device in our homes and businesses
will someday be connected to the Internet.
Danny
Hillis is an engineer and scientist who graduated and worked at MIT designing
and developing computer hardware and software.
He
spoke earlier this year about his concern with the Internet developing into a
colossal network interconnected into every aspect of our infrastructure. He
feels this leaves it too easily open to cyber-attack, or even a “meltdown.”
Hillis
suggested we have a “Plan B” or an alternate network, in case the Internet we
use today becomes compromised.
Cerf
understands the Internet is ubiquitous – every day it is being connected to
more devices in new locations.
He
acknowledges the Internet will continue to grow and get even larger, and raised
the question: “Does that mean it’s all going to collapse?”
Cerf
answered: “I don’t think so . . . I think it’s going to be pretty hard to shut
it down.”
“It
is stunningly resistant,” he added.
Cerf
revealed there are changes being made to strengthen the Internet against the
problems we read about.
While
looking out at the audience, Cerf asked them to consider all the malware
(malicious software used to disrupt computer operation) floating around the
Internet. He then asked if they weren’t amazed by how the Internet still works.
“This
is not a static system,” he said, referring to the Internet. “This thing is
still evolving, even though the design was done 40 years ago.”
Cerf
spoke reflectively about knowing all the things needed to happen on the
Internet (to make it operate); and how he found it astonishing it works at all.
Yours
truly chuckled when Vinton Cerf, the “Father of the Internet,” acknowledged to
the audience that upon seeing a webpage come up correctly, he sometimes still
says “Holy crap, it actually worked!”
