Vint Cerf on the Future of the Net 103
johnd writes "The internet is set to become the basis for just about every form of communication, according to net pioneer Vint Cerf, and he should know what he is talking about. Not terribly in depth, but an interesting read all the same."
Know what he's talking about? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why should Vint Cerf know what he's talking about? Sure, he knows all about the Internet; but does he know all about communication in general?
Would the sotry submitter agree with the (equivalently valid) statement that "Microsoft Windows is set to become the basis for just about every form of personal computing, according to Bill Gates, and he should know what he is talking about"?
Re:Know what he's talking about? (Score:5, Interesting)
In Japan NTT's profits have been dented because people can call much more cheaply via the Yahoo BB VoIP service they get as part of their ADSL subscription.
plus vint cerf isn't commercially linked to the internet in the same way that gates is to windows.
Re:Know what he's talking about? (Score:5, Informative)
Err.. Vint Cerf is a senior VP at WorldCom.
Don't think it is a big leap.... (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you see as not being replaced eventually?
Brian Ellenberger
Re:Don't think it is a big leap.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Don't think it is a big leap.... (Score:1)
For years we've heard about these pages of inteligent ink that moves to make up the words and pictures. If that technology ever materialises then perhaps newspapers will be replaced by somethign based on the net.
Although its hard to put your faith in a technology that could just be an etcha-sketcha.
Re:Don't think it is a big leap.... (Score:2)
Re:Don't think it is a big leap.... (Score:2)
Re:Know what he's talking about? (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't get me wrong -- I love Linux, and I wish MS would die a fast yet incredibly painful death, but the reality is we've got a long, long way to go before we've made a dent in MS's personal computing monopoly. Maybe this year is the year we finally make a meaningful difference, but it's going to take some watershed event.
Isn't Cerf the One Who Predicted the Net Crashing (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Isn't Cerf the One Who Predicted the Net Crashi (Score:2)
Time for ... Word Nazi! (Score:2)
Rather than as in of course he knows.
Better example of the first instance is President Shrub, as in it's a damned cockup that he doesn't know much at all.
Better example of the second instance is Donald Knuth on a whoel lot of topics, where everyone knows that he knows what he is talking about.
Re:Know what he's talking about? (Score:2)
Except that Bill Gates had nothing to do with the invention of personal computers, so your analogy falls apart right away there. You could credit personal computing to Edmund Berkeley (who conceptualized the "Simon" plans) or maybe some folks at Heathkit, Altair, etc
Re:Know what he's talking about? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why should you? Seriously, Vint has had a huge impact on the way the world works. His ideas and implementation of ideas changed the world once already.
Basis for communication? Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
From the article:
The next decade, he believes, will see the net spread even further and start to become the basic communications infrastructure for almost anything.
This unnerves me a little. We saw the dot com bubble burst after everyone decided thast the internet was the future of commerce, and we still have not fully recovered from that one. I sure as hell don't want to put all our eggs in this basket all over again and potentially see another messy commercial disaster take out the communications infrastructure... Maybe I am being a little too uptight about it, but I can't shake the feeling after last time.
Re:Basis for communication? Well... (Score:2)
this unnerves me even more.....
looking forward to when this communication system joins fire signaling, the pony express, and the telegraph in the dustbin of history.
Re:Basis for communication? Well... (Score:2)
Re:Basis for communication? Well... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Basis for communication? Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
The dot com bollocks happened because too few people asked "where's the business plan?". That's all. A bit of common sense is all that's required.
QUALity eQUALs eQUALity
Re:Basis for communication? Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
Everyone is the same as everyone else and we live on the same planet. Brits, Americans are no better or worse than Iraqis, Iranians, North Koreans or any other nationals.
A 6.6 earthquake recently killed two people in Paso Robles. A week later, another 6.6 earthquake killed 25,000 people in Bam. That doesn't make Americans better or worse than Iranians (the refusal to accept even unofficial aid from the only country in the Middle East with a modern rescue and emergency medicine capability aside) but it certainly suggests that one society is better at building safe houses than the other...
QUALity eQUALs eQUALity
...the elegant logic of your proof notwithstanding.
Re:Basis for communication? Well... (Score:2, Insightful)
QUALity eQUALs eQUALity comes from Michael Fairchild and his book "ROCK PROPHECY : Sex and Jimi Hendrix in World Religions (the Original Asteroid Prediction & Microsoft Connection). OK, the guy is nuts on the face of it, but he does come out with some really good stuff. "The point i
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Basis for communication? Well... (Score:2)
Re:Basis for communication? Well... (Score:1)
Thinking globally is what humans need to learn. I think the internet is aiding that process. People from all over the planet are communicating and forming friendships online. Conditioned social stereotypes can be challenged and discarded.
Re:Basis for communication? Well... (Score:2)
My colleagues at work are British, Irish, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Turkish, Iranian, Iraqi, Peruvian, Ethiopian, Eritrean, Hong Kong Chinese, Sierra Leonian, Pakistani, Indian, and this is not an exhaustive list. I know that we're all much the same, from experience. Cultures smultures - our needs and desires are exactly the same. Th
IP on ... (Score:3, Funny)
Sorta sums it up
Re:IP on ... (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, we say just the same thing at Canopy and SCO.
Re:IP on ... (Score:1)
Re:Basis for communication? Well... (Score:1, Insightful)
But how is that a
Re:Basis for communication? Well... (Score:1)
Speaking as an unfortunate call center administrator for a
Re:Basis for communication? Well... (Score:2)
Re:Expertise does not equate vision (Score:1, Insightful)
I only think it was funny though, I agree with him about this and have felt this way for years.
Isn't it already? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Isn't it already? (Score:4, Insightful)
You never watch television?
Or flip on the radio?
Or pick up a newspaper?
Or read a book or magazine?
Or notice a billboard?
Or go out to a movie?
Or use a FRS radio on the ski slopes?
Or print out a report/design/specification?
Or read someone's body language?
We communicate in lots of different ways. Whether you realize it or not, I expect you don't do all your communication over the internet and telephone.
Re:Isn't it already? (Score:2)
VoIP (Score:5, Insightful)
It is not that those people do not want a broadband connection, it is just not available at an affordable price in a lot of places.
And in order to make something successfull it should be available to (almost) everyone.
Re:VoIP (Score:2, Interesting)
The consumer doesn't matter, it's all about infrastructure.
Re:VoIP (Score:1)
Right now we're in a phase where VoIP is becoming more usefull and networks can handle the type of load we want to put on them. It will soon come to everyone having a broadband connection in their home if they realise it or not. POTS will be forgoten about and the world will be just a bunch of optics, in reality it is more cost effective to use fiber for everything instead of all kinds of mismatched cables and wire
Re:VoIP (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, it's happening quite rapidly behind their backs. It's not just Japan that has converted to VoIP. In the past year or so, we've seen the reports here and elsewhere that much of the long-distance and high-capacity lines within the phone system have been silently converted to IP. Here in North America, if you make a call outside your local exchange, there is a rapidly growing probability that it will be packetized and sent over IP (RTP actually) to the other end's exchange, where it will be converted back to analog.
So all those people using 56K modems will have their data converted to analog voice in the modem, converted back to digital at the local TelCo. It will be sent over IP to the remote TelCo, where it will be converted back to analog and fed to a modem, which will convert it back to digital. Each translation will produce a roughly 100-times reduction in bit speed. Yeah, it's tremendously inefficient, compared with just doing IP for the whole thing. That's the way things are done in the modern commercial world.
We still have analog phones in our house. But a couple of years ago, we got a good deal from our cable supplier (RCN) to include phone service over the cable. They installed a little box that connects the incoming cable to the house phones. I asked someone at RCN what this did. The summary was that it "puts the phones on the Internet". I asked if this was what they called "VoIP", and he said "I think so".
It can be difficult to get a straight story in such cases. You may very well be using VoIP at home right now, without knowing it. And the people at the phone company might not know it, either.
Funny thing, in the project that I'm working on now, one thing we're trying to figure out is how to get our text messages converted to voice (solved), and sent out to a phone (not solved). We have digitized voice files, and the computers are on the Internet. You'd think it would be trivial to connect to a phone anywhere there's digital service. But it's far from trivial. Most of the people you talk to within the phone system are interested solely in selling you an expensive "total solution" in which you hand your entire company's data over to them, and can't be persuaded to talk about anything so mundane as delivering a single digital file to a single digital device. Information on how to talk device-to-device is exceedingly difficult to come by.
Re:VoIP (Score:2)
no sh*t (Score:3, Insightful)
Get a grip folks. This guy is no futurist. And he didn't predict this any more than Al Gore invented the internet. I.E.: They were involved but it would have happened without them.
Re:no sh*t (Score:1)
Is that the way you end all your conversations?
Re:no sh*t (Score:1)
Re:no sh*t (Score:1)
One disappointing sentence ... (Score:5, Informative)
I was really disappointed to read this in the article. First, it wasn't true. There were a lot of such restrictions in the early implementations, but by the time that TCP was spec'd, there were already cases of interconnected hardware and software from different vendors. TCP was a (pretty good) attempt to codify what had been learned about how to do this.
But more important is the point that such single-source restrictions were exactly why ARPA started funding what became the Internet. It was, to a great extent, a response to ongoing problems with electronic gadgets that couldn't talk to each other. The military (and ARPA was a military research agency) wanted this problem solved. What good were all those fancy-schmancy electronic thingies if they couldn't exchange data?
If you look up the early docs from the ARPAnet, you'll see pretty pictures all over the place showing large numbers of electronic gadgets, obviously from a lot of different manufacturers, with lines between them showing the comm links. It's obvious that interconnecting hardware and software from different vendors was a major goal right from the start.
There have been a number of comments on why ARPA gave their development money to universities rather than to commercial vendors. A number of military types were open about this from the start: They had learned that military contractors simply couldn't be forced to work together. Most attempts to get them to cooperate with data comm were pretty much dismal failures. They were competitors, after all. They would pretend to be cooperating, while doing everything they could to fix things so their competitors couldn't cooperate. This is still a problem, of course, and probably always will be. Commercial vendors sabotaging standards is a very familiar process.
So ARPA took the approach of funding an independent gang of academic hackers. Give them equipment and money to pay students to hack away. Fund a few overseers to attempt to coordinate this herd of cats. When they seem to have something working, buy them some fun new hardware and challenge them to incorporate it with the old stuff. Try not to let them get lazy and develop a monoculture of equipment from a single vendor. Watch what they do, and carry off anything they produce that seems useful.
But the intent from the start was to make all electronic gadgets talk sensibly to each other. If the early setups didn't achieve this, it was simply a case of "We're not there yet". The intent was to get there.
Re:One disappointing sentence ... (Score:1)
I was really disappointed to read this in the article. First, it wasn't true. There were a lot of such restrictions in the early implementations, but by the time that TCP was spec'd, there were already cases of interconnected hardware and software from different vendors. [...]
Err, I think you may both be right; there were both IMPs, Interface Message Processors, minicomputers ma
He is correct (of course he would know too) (Score:2, Informative)
If you look at the sentence again, what he is saying is the equipment required to connect to the ARPAnet had to be the same - and it was - all connections were via IMPs or Interface Message Processors. There were different types of computers behind the IMPs
If you use the OSI RM to classify the ARPAnet, as all connections and technology was the same, it was mostly just a big link or data link layer network.
Actually, being more specific, it was sort of like a cross between the network and link layers. It
Change ownership (Score:1, Insightful)
Vint Cerf? (Score:1)
Yes, and that's the future of Internet regulation (Score:2)
Keep in mind the original mandate of ICANN was for the preliminary board to ensure a member elected board was put in place in the first 6 months.
Or that the "white paper" that mandated this was a revision of the "green paper" that said there would be a handful of new tlds waaaay back when not 4 years after the fact.
Big business ownz the root zon
Re:Dangers in exceeding the original design (Score:2)
Say goodbye to random port scans: The addressable space on any local broadcast segment (i.e. Ethernet / FDDI / Token Ring) is a
Re:Dangers in exceeding the original design (Score:5, Interesting)
The Internet was not designed, period.
The Internet grew into what it is now from a large variety of smaller networks. The protocols that make the Internet as we know it work were designed, to be sure, but most of them weren't even designed together. DNS, for example, is an essential factor in today's Internet, but it was designed independant of TCP/IP. The same can be said of SMTP, FTP, HTTP, etc. These things came about to fill needs as they arose.
And the Internet will continue to grow and evolve. Even IP, the net's fundamental building block, will change as IPv6 is implemented.
The Internet is a fantastic example of the power of bottom-up design. Implicit in your comment is the notion that we'd be better off usign a top-down design, where we sit around and think up all the things we want the net to do, and then try to design a big system that has facilities for all those different things. I think that if we did that, we'd either fail miserably, or we'd end up with something that looks very much like today's Internet.
It's not already? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:It's not already? (Score:3, Funny)
I do it over the photocopier myself
Real Time Communication And The Net (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Real Time Communication And The Net (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Real Time Communication And The Net (Score:2)
True. But RTP (Real Time Protocol, RCC 1889) was added to the TCP/UDP list some years ago. Its implementation has been somewhat spotty. But most of the Net's infrastructure understands it, though your workstation may not. It's the main basis for VoIP.
So there is the possibility of the internet continuing to run side by side with other communication systems.
Or more likely, TCP and UDP will run side b
Re:Real Time Communication And The Net (Score:1)
Telcos are for-profit companies and are desperate to make money just like everyone else.
Consider where their major costs lie. The costs of having physical media (fibre, copper, etc) running across the country and down the street and up the buildings far outweighs any other cost for any type of remote communication - including development, end-devices etc.
Any communication methods that can share that most expensive resource (the
Yes that's right (Score:2)
Visionary my foot
Ohfercryinoutloud (Score:2)
One more and I swear I'm going to turn into one of those single-purpose trolls like the apt-get guy or the Cory Doctorow troll. At least apt-get and Doctorow (admittedly two concepts I've never paired together before) have done something useful in the last decasde.
Re:Ohfercryinoutloud (Score:2, Funny)
I'll second that. What a liar!
-- Al Gore
Economic conditions will get in the way (Score:1)
Re:Economic conditions will get in the way (Score:2)
TelCos are replacing traditional circuit switches with soft switches and installing gateways. Soft switches switch both packet & circuit based calls. Gateways connect the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) to packet based data networks (generally private networks bacause of issues with security, priority, and latency -- possibly this will change with ipv6?). So users don't necessarily need a net connection to use VoIP. You pick up a
Vint Cerf was one of the chief forces in ICANN (Score:2)
I can see it already... (Score:4, Funny)
l33td00d: ph34r my l33t skillz!
marvin01: I have an Iludium pew-36 Explosive Space Modulator that can blow up the entire planet.
l33td00d: haha n00b! I pwn j00!
marvin01: Soon I will finally be able to see Venus clearly.
l33td00d: ha! I w1ll fuxX0r j00 up, l4m3r!
marvin01: Look outside, Earthling!
l33td00d: wtf!?
Re:I can see it already... (Score:1)
Commercial enterprises providing information? (Score:2, Insightful)
I think one thing that many 'visionaries' overlook is that someone will probably have to provide the information behind these magic new URLs like UPC:3466745689.
In that case, the manufacturer would be a good bet... but what does ISBN:1-84146986-4 take you to?
While I agree with all these visionaries, there is much that needs to be worked out first. A cynic would say that the open nature of the internet doesn't mesh with commercial enterprises, but I hope a compromise can be reached!
Re:Commercial enterprises providing information? (Score:2)
In that case, the manufacturer would be a good bet...
Bet again.
UPCs are provided to manufacturers by the UCC (United Code Council). If you pay enough money, you can have access to their entire up-to-date database. If you don't want to pay, you can try sites like the UPC database [upcdatabase.com], but they lack many entries.
Re:Commercial enterprises providing information? (Score:2)
Google
Seriously, you'd probably have a locally cached list of providers for the ISBN scheme, so clicking the ISBN URN would consult the providers who would map it to a URL or choice of URL's (obviously need an interface for that, a search results window is probably appropriate). A librarian would probably want the library of congress, a home user might want amazon or bn. Browsers should probably be set up to use a sidebar to display the possible sources.
P
The internet alone is not enough (Score:4, Interesting)
The only thing missing is a secure network. That's the fourth element that's really missing. If people had a secure network, they could vote and pay online. Current over-IP methods aren't good enough, and don't provide the sense of security needed. over-the-phone solutions aren't very secure either.
The closest thing to a secure network I can think of it France's government-run X25 network, that powers the national Minitel network, that is inaccessible to anybody but authorised France Telecom personel, and runs completely separate from the internet. In fact, it was there before the internet. People in France use it massively to order and pay for things online, and some exams, notably the amateur radio exam, is taken on the Minitel too. Many people predicted the death of the Minitel because it's slow (1200/75 bauds) and very expensive (0.34 EUR / minute) but it's still around and going strong because people trust it, with good reasons.
Once we have (1) the internet for most mundane data transfers, (2) the phone services, (3) the postal services and (4) the secure network, then people's habit will really change. As long as the secure network is missing, I don't think the internet alone will change much of anything.
Re:The internet alone is not enough (Score:1)
I'd love to say you're right - but I can't. The "secure" physical network (separate from all other network infrastructure) does exist - but is rapidly being subsumed by IP infrastructure - some of which is over the subsumed pieces of ATM and other physical layers.
The only secure network that will be created in the future will be done usi
Minitel (Score:2)
Canada (Montreal, at least) had something similar in 1998, "Alex" [www.wlu.ca] as well as Videotron's Videoway (which was cable TV-based).
I think this might be a troll ... (Score:1)
If it isn't, then I suggest Rosco do some research into a few topics I've discribed below.
The internet (IP-based, as we know it) is only a complement to other forms of coummications.
The Internet will replace all other application specific networks. The advantage of the Internet (and the underlying technology) is that it is generalised to support many types of applications, not one particular type. The classical example of an application specific network is the traditional voice network. If you want t
The next decade will definatly be interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
In the uk, where we don't have free local calls the home phone is on the point of dying out. Allot of people in their 20s already do without a home phone and simply rely on their mobiles. As the price of mobile calls drops and BT maintain their rediculous pricing it is not outragous to imagine the only place where phone lines are used are for small bussinesses.
Larger organisations are already switching to IP phones and its likely that this could become the normal for small bussinesses aswell.
I think any hardlines will be, within a few years, mostly broadband in one guise or another, with voice and data services both being run through the net. Thsi could lead to some interesting additions to the telephone service - more advanced caller ID, the ability to send bits of text and photos as part of the phone call(rather than telling someone to check their email), who knows what else.
Mobile phones will be far more difficult to predict. They are still very much an area of growth rather than decline. Even the future of 3G phones is uncertain but I can imagine some integration with the expansion of wifi. An interesting case to look at is that of Rabbit - a pre-mobile phone idea which ran phones through local hotspots. A bit like a cordless phone with base stations around the country. We could well see Nokia producing dual phones that run through wifi if its available.
One thing that is likely to happen is a diversification between the infrastructure and the services. You will have your mobile and hardlines provided by one company but then run your (god forbid) metred wifi access, phone calls, mobile calls and god knows what else through virtual companies. This can already seen through these companies offering cheap international calls such as OneTel.
Predictions (Score:2)
IMHO, never trust somebody who has a vested interest in the outcome to make good predictions.
Not only did Vint invent the internet... (Score:1)
Nice going Vint!
Knowitall (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Knowitall (Score:2)
He is a supporter of Gore's statement that "during [his] service in the United States Congress, [he] took the initiative in creating the Internet."
Vint Cerf... (Score:1, Funny)
MOD PARENT AS TROLL (Score:1)
*SEVEN* years ago, Vint Cert was my boss's boss's boss at the MCI Internet Engineering Department. Considering that the internet had been around since the 1970s, and we all knew this, I am not so sure that Vint would ever say something so stupid.
In case anyone is wondering, Vint's personal presence is pretty much identical to Timothy Leary, who I've seen speak (but not met). And his license plate says "CERFS UP".
Re:Names suck people (Score:2)
Elf needs coffee badly. Bracing for "Off Topic" moderation impact.