My Creation

        February 1, 2015

        Hello! Welcome to Vint Cerf's blog. Before I tell you about how I co-invented the Internet, I would like to say welcome to those of you who are on this site for the first time. If you do not know who I am, I was a developer of the Internet’s predecessor, the ARPANET, and co-designed the Internet Protocols that are used today. I am currently a Vice President and the Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, a role I have served since 2005.

        I went to Stanford University in 1965 for my college education. In 1969, after continuing my interest in computers, I moved to the University of California, Los Angeles, where they were setting up one of the computers that would connect to the ARPANET. That was when I met my future coworker Bob Kahn, and together we helped test the ARPANET. It worked, when we successfully sent the message “Lo” from a computer at UCLA to another one at Stanford University in October 1969 (The computer broke when attemting to send “G.”). I did not invent the ARPANET, but rather, I worked with Leonard Kleinrock on it. From there, Kahn and I knew we could expand the ARPANET to something greater and more practical outside of the Defense Department.

        In 1972, Kahn left UCLA to join IPTO, the Information Processing Techniques Office, in Washington, DC. IPTO is part of a more important organization in the Pentagon known as DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The ARPANET was the Internet network of the Advanced Research Projects Agency, of which the word "Defense" was added later that year. Kahn worked until 1975 on expansion of the ARPANET to the United Kingdom and Norway and introduction of the Alohanet, PRNET (packet radio network), and SATNET (satellite network). His ultimate goal was to connect PRNET and SATNET to the ARPANET. However, there was a major difficulty, in that they were all incompatible with each other. This would require a new approach to networking, of which Kahn brought this problem up to me in the Spring of 1973.

       At this point, Kahn approached me with the idea that would eventually become the Internet, having Transfer Control Protocol. We formed a strong team, combining my ability to write host software with his knowledge of the problem of connecting dissimilar networks. At a seminar in June 1973, we invited networkers from around the world in the first reveal of the proposed system. On May 5, 1974, Kahn and I published A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication, a research paper on this topic. 

        There are two key elements that are required in order to reliably transmit digital information across different networks. The TCP, or Transmission Control Protocol, provides orderly and reliable transmission across networks. There are also gateways and routers between networks in this decentralized system. Small packets of broken-down information are passed from router to router until they find the one nearest the recipient, and when every packet arrives, only then is the information is loaded onto one’s device. Packets are also sent to a network address and then a host address. If you are more interested, feel free to read the "The Internet" tab on the header. The Internet was designed to make minimal demands, provide a smooth user experience, and to scale upwards. 
        I moved to Washington, DC, to work for IPTO, from 1976 until 1982. In 1978, I worked with DARPA workers Jon Postel and Danny Cohen to split TCP into a TCP host protocol and IP, or Internetworking Protocol. This vastly simplified the transfers between networks.

        That is a short history of my experience at DARPA and building the Internet’s Transfer Protocol. I hope that I kept this summary short, but informative.

        Vinton Cerf

        Age 73

        Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google