Case Study Final

Dr. Vint Cerf:
Father of the Internet

Rebekah N. Diaz
ISSC363
Dr. Tannoury
December 28th, 2013

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Technology refers to, the making, usage, modification, and size of machines, tools, methods applied by an order when dealing with problems. It also applies to methods applied when improving an already existing solution and when performing a duty or achieving a goal. The superficial IT evolution can be said to be preceded by hand and print revolutions. All the things that one can now handle within a short spun of time just by the click of a button is quite different from the past. Systems like phones, computers and other electronic devices can carry out a bunch of work just by the click of the correct button within a minimum duration unlike in the past. They have made the lives of young people comfortable and swifter, as explained by Keith (100).
Modern technology has led to globalization. This has made the world smaller. It has allowed the world’s economy to be a separate business unit. This business unit is interdependent. The Internet, televisions, and cell phones are enlightening socialization by making both positive and negative impacts on the lives of children. Internet is the first group having enormous influence in technology. It has changed how people communicate, when they talk, where they relate from and the frequency at which they do so. The Internet allows for globalization, interconnection and sharing of information. It has made the community a place worth living. We can handle tasks at ease, faster, and with less interference. We are heading in the right direction.
Dr. Vint Cerf is deemed as the father of the internet. He comes out as a renowned graduate from the famous UCLA. He was greatly involved in the very design of the known ARPANET, an achievement that led him to receive many accolades. He earned this nickname due to the fact that he has a hand in the development of the internet and also that he was the Co- author of the TCP/the IP. This is the main network among many other networks on the internet. Diaz 3
Cerf evidently grew up in the city of Los Angeles. His performance in school was very excellent and the aptitude for math that he possessed was a thing to revere. His code of dressing was a show of a different and principled person, one who would emerge as the major force behind the emergence of the internet. His desire and passion for computers was evident in his sole life. He considered the computer as tool where one could program something and it produced exactly the desired results. This was the main reason why he decided to venture more into the discovery of the internet and how it directly linked with the computers.
Vint’s interest in computers started at an early age and grew up to attending Stanford and majored in mathematics. His interest is best brought out in his vivid description of computers as an unbelievable sandbox in which every grain of sand was under your control. (Cerf in Hafner & Lyon, 139). In 1965 up on graduating from Stanford, Vint went to work for IBM as a systems engineer, but later on he opted to return to school to further his knowledge and studies in computers. His enrolled in UCLA's computer science department and began pursuing his Ph.D. His thesis was founded on work he did on an ARPA-funded project for the "Super Computer"—a computer that was designed with the purpose of remotely monitoring the execution of programs on another computer.
The Super Computer project sparked Cerf’s interest in the field of computer networking. Cerf’s involvement in ARPANET commenced in the fall of 1968, when ARPA set up another program at UCLA with an objective of building the ARPANET. The program was under the Network Measurement Center (NMC). NMC was responsible for performance testing and analysis, a sort of testing ground. The center was run by about forty students under the management of Len Kleinrock. Among the senior members of the team running the program was Diaz 4
Vinton. By the end of 1968, a small group of graduate students from the four schools that were slated to be the first four nodes on the ARPANET (Stanford, the University of Utah, UCLA and UC Santa Barbara) began meeting regularly to discuss the new network and problems related challenges to its development. They referred to their team as the Network Working Group (NWG). During the design and implementation of the ARPANET the NWG proved to be instrumental in solving many of the problems that would arrive, however, they did not realize their importance at the time. Vinton and his team thought of themselves as just rank amateurs, and we were expecting that some supervisory authority would finally come with a methodology of how to go about it but eventually it was all up to them. (Cerf in Abbate, 73)
In those days, ARPANET was the wide-area network sponsored by the US Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). It went live in 1969, at the Stanford University where Vinton was an ARPANET scientist. At the moment, Dr. Vint was a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Stanford and has also worked at UCLA on the development of ARPANET. The military became interested in a common protocol as different networks and systems using different and proprietary protocols started to link up to ARPANET, and they discovered that they could not communicate to each other with ease.
Within a few years of the creation of the ARPANET, other computers networks that were independent and self-contained networks were deployed. For Vint and the ARPANET team the pertinent issue now became to coordinate a computer that was on a satellite, a computer on a radio net and a computer on ARPANET to communicate uniformly with each other without realizing what's going on in between. (Cerf in Hafner & Lyon, 235). That is when Vinton and fellow team members descended on the realization that there needed to be a "gateway" computer Diaz 5 between each network to route packets. The rationale behind gateway computers is that they would not have to take into consideration the various complexities of each network rather, they would simply be in charge of relaying packets back and forth. However all of the networks would still maintain their unique ways of transmitting packets, using their own protocols. This created a need for a new standard to link all of the networks and allow inter-network communication.
To address the need for such a standard, Vint and Kahn started working on a plan in 1973 and in September, they presented a paper outlining their concepts to the International Networking Group. In May 1974, they described a new protocol they called the transmission-control protocol (TCP) as a standard in packet network communication in a paper they had completed, it was entitled "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication". The paper was later on published in the IEEE Transactions on Communications. The details of the protocols have without doubt changed however, the fundamental concept was fully articulated in that first paper and remains viable today, over twenty years later. The main idea brought out in the paper was to enclose packets in datagrams which can be compared to envelopes containing letters. The working concept of TCP was simply explained as ordinary mail where the content and format of the letter was not important for its delivery, but the information on the envelope was standardized to facilitate efficient delivery. Therefore, Gateway computers would merely read only the delivery information contained in the datagrams and deliver the contents to host computers. Only the host computers would actually "open" the envelope and read the actual contents of the packet. TCP allowed networks to be joined into a network of networks, or what is now called the Internet. Diaz 6
Spanning from 1976 to 1982, Dr. Vinton was instrumental in managing the development of Internet-related data packet technologies and network security programs during which he was with the U.S. Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency. It was also during this time that he formed the Internet Configuration Control Board (ICCB), which evolved into the Internet Architecture Board (lAB), the body responsible today for technical oversight of the Internet architecture and standards process.
In 1976, Vint took up a job as program manager responsible for what was then called the "ARPA Internet" at ARPA and he used it as an avenue refine TCP. In 1978, Vint and his team made a major refinement in which they split TCP into two parts. They took the element of TCP that is responsible for routing packages and formed a separate protocol called the Internet Protocol (IP).TCP would remain responsible for disintegrating messages into datagrams, , detecting errors, reassembling messages putting packets in the right order, and resending misplaced packets. The new protocol as a result of the combination was called TCP/IP. It went on to become the standard for all Internet communication. On 1st January 1983, the new Internet Protocol TCP/IP replaced the older system (TCP) and it was widely accepted as the standard and this led to the birth of modern internet. The Internet, arguably the most revolutionary and cost-effective communication system has transformed the lives of billions of people across the world. Apparent use of the technology of “packet-switching", the new method of linking computers and sharing information, built up to the eventual formation of the World Wide Web.
Prior to APRAnet, Vinton had served as the vice president of MCI Digital Information Services from 1982–1986, where he led the innovation and engineering of MCI Mail, the first commercial email service to be connected to the Internet. After inception of TCP/IP protocol, Diaz 7
Vinton rejoined MCI during 1994 and served as Senior Vice President of Technology Strategy. In his leadership, he helped to drive corporate strategy development from a technical perspective. Prior to this, he held the role of MCI’s senior vice president of Architecture and Technology, leading a team of architects and engineers to design advanced networking frameworks. This widely included Internet-based solutions for delivering a combination of services to include data, information, voice and video services for corporate and individual use.
In 1992 Vinton and Bob Kahn co-founded the Internet Society to provide leadership and astute guidance in education, policy, and standards related to the Internet. Since 2000, Vinton has served as chairman of various boards that encompass technology and science innovation including Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), founding president of the Internet Society (ISOC) from 1992-1995 and was on the ISOC board until 2000, a Fellow of the IEEE, ACM, AAAS, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the International Engineering Consortium, the Computer History Museum and the National Academy of Engineering.
Vinton has received numerous awards and commendations in connection with his work on the Internet, including the Marconi Fellowship, Charles Stark Draper award of the National Academy of Engineering, the Prince of Asturias award for science and technology, the Alexander Graham Bell Award presented by the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf, the A.M. Turing Award from the Association for Computer Machinery, the Silver Medal of the International Telecommunications Union, and the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal, among many others.(Luxembourg IPv6 Council). In addition to his accolades President Clinton in 1997 recognized vintons work with the U.S. National Medal of Technology. In 2005, Vint Diaz 8 together with Bob received the highest civilian honor bestowed in the U.S., the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It recognizes the fact that their extensive and innovative work on the software code used to transmit data across the Internet has put them "at the forefront of a digital revolution that has transformed global commerce, communication, and entertainment." Bidgoli (2009) observes that there has been a major surge of internet browsers in the world in recent history. This rise may be attributed to the increasing number of internet users in the world as well as the scramble for the internet dollar which is such a lucrative venture today. There are millions of internet users and the large market only means the fight for market share among industry players in an effort to neutralize market dominance by one single player. For a long time internet explorer was almost a monopoly in the market largely due to the fact that it was mounted on normality with the windows operating system. With time, however, the Microsoft browser has come under heavy competition from other heavy giants such as the Firefox browser, and Apple’s Safari. With the increase in demand for mobile devices globally, there has also been a need to develop browsers that are friendly and compatible with the mobile devices. I will analyze the properties and characteristics of each of the three browsers clearly highlighting the pros and cons of each as I narrow down to the best among the three.
Start with Apple’s Safari which runs on a Mac computer with either a Mac OS X v10.6.8, or a Personal computer with either Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 as operating system. The Safari browser is popular among many people and users for its instinctive usability; it is Apple’s modernized, lightweight and excellently sleek internet browser. The browser stalks other leading internet browsers in terms of market share, merely due to the fact that it was a Mac-only application for a very long time. However, in 2007 Apple launched a special safari application for windows opening the gateway to the largest portion of internet users in the world. Many argue that the browsers likability is not only due to the fact that it is available for Windows, Diaz 9 rather, it’s due to the fact that is fast and easy to use. This is an amazing feature in a world where people are continually seeking for computer applications that have a user friendly interface. On a downward side though, the browser is said to lack some of the customization features that lots of users are looking for in a browser this days. On this aspect, the application seems like a pale shadow of its worst rivals in the market such as the Firefox browser which is reputed for its undeniably great customization features.
Vinton has worked for Google as a Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist since October 2005. In this capacity he has become known for his forecasts on how technology will affect future society, surrounding such areas as artificial intelligence, environmentalism, the advent of IPv6 and the transformation of the television industry and its delivery structure.
Even with continuous improvement of the TCP/IP standard, Vinton seems relentless in his quest to break boundaries in internet communication. Dr. Cerf is responsible for identifying new enabling technologies and applications on the Internet and other platforms for the global advancement. This can be attested in one of the recent projects he is involved in- the Interplanetary Internet, together with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This project basically entails invention of a new standard to communicate from planet to planet, utilizing radio/laser communications that are tolerant of signal degradations including variable delay and disruption caused, for instance, by celestial motion (Ipnsig, 2011). It would only be befitting that the man who invented the internet take on this endeavor and giant leap, Vinton Cerf has made great academic accomplishments in his life including a BSc degree from Stanford University, and MSc and PhD. degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He has received eighteen honorary degrees
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References

1.Hafner, K. & Lyon, M. (1996). Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster.

2.Abbate, J. (1999). Inventing the Internet. Cambridge: MIT Press.

3. Luxembourg IPv6 Council The New Internet 2009
4. Bidgoli, H. (2004). The internet encyclopedia. Hoboken, N.J: Wiley.

5. Gralla, P. (1998). How the Internet works (4th ed.). Indianapolis, IN: Que.

6. Schneider, G. P., & Evans, J. (2009). New perspectives on the internet: introductory (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.