The Father of the Internet, Vint Cerf, admits "I wish I could've predicted more." He's talking about the time he helped create the Internet, or rather the TCP/IP protocol during his tenture with the United States Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Obviously, the Internet he saw coming isn't what we have now. He didn't think of the child predators, child pornographers, spammers, hackers or crackers, that would make the Internet a harmful or illegal place to be at.

Vint doesn't believe encryption is the solution to spamming, or Hollywood is right, or that the Internet now is perfect. Although, he is giving a hand to make it better. For instance, the IPv6 (Internet Protocol Version 6) design which will allow trillions of addresses to be linked. In this exciting edition of Larry's World, learn more about the so-called 'father of the Internet,' without whom you may not have been reading this.

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Vint Cerf is commonly referred to as the "father of the Internet" for the design of which he credits Herbert Zimmerman and Louis Pouzin (designer of the CYCLADES network) with important influences. Vint holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from Stanford University and Master of Science and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from UCLA. He is the senior vice president of Technology Strategy for MCI and serves as chairman of the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Resources:

• Interview with Vint Cerf on IPv6
• Internet Protocol Version 6
• Wikipedia entry Vint Cerf

This program is from the Larry's World series.

For Team ITC:

• Description editor: Sid Yadav
• Post-production audio engineer: Paul Figgiani