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Vint Cerf visits Google's Dublin HQ
06-03-2006
by Maxim Kelly

 

Google's "Internet Evangelist" Vint Cerf visited Dublin last Friday to discuss everything from internet protocol architectures, and e-culture, to inter-planetary communications and broadband in Ireland.

Known as a founding father of the internet, Cerf invented the TCP/IP protocols on which much of the internet is built upon. In more recent times, Cerf has taken up the position of Internet Evangelist at internet giant Google.

"My role at Google is to be an intellectual bumblebee," Cerf told ElectricNews.Net, "Ideas are like flowers so someone needs to see if there's any nectar in them," he said.

Speaking at a talk on Tracking the Internet in the 21st Century, Cerf expressed concern about low broadband penetration in Ireland, and compared the country unfavourably against success in South Korea and Hong Kong.

Cerf said there was a case for governmental market intervention to ensure universal broadband access -- especially in rural areas where there may not be private sector incentives. As a template he mentioned the 1934 Universal Service Fund scheme designed to subsidise the roll-out of telephone networks in rural America.

Praising communications minister Noel Dempsey's "energy and depth of understanding" on issues affecting the internet, Cerf went on to extol the regulatory regime in the UK. He said other European countries, and the US, could learn from UK regulator Ofcom's insistence that telecoms providers separate their wholesale and retail divisions.

Cerf commented that e-culture was changing constantly. "Just as years ago university students were used to e-mail and demanded it when they entered employment, today online gamers are the internet pioneers because when they go into offices they are going to ask their bosses 'where's my instant message conferencing facility?'," Cerf said. "Enterprise computing once drove the internet, but if you want to know the future then ask some 14-year-olds."

Looking to the future, the 63-year-old computer scientist predicted that by 2010 household appliances will be online via broadband-enabled electricity supply. "I suspect we will see device-to-device interaction which will dwarf human e-mail traffic," he said. Cerf added that there must be a limit on the amount of online devices allowed per person because current internet structures cannot handle the demand.

"I'm a big proponent of moving to Internet Protocol version six [IPv6] and I'm going to keep on pounding on the table to change to IPv6 before we run out of IP addresses," he said.

Responding to criticism about Google altering its content for Chinese users on its dot-cn portal, Cerf told reporters that Google's hidden success had been allowing Chinese users to know when information they requested had been censored. "It's amazing the Chinese government let us do that," he said, adding that Google had to be sensitive to local laws to protect locally-based employees from prosecution.

Deep space communications are a concern for Cerf, who explained that current TCP/IP technology does not allow inter-planetary communication because of a 40 minute time lag even at the speed of light. "Celestial motion really messes-up TCP/IP," he said. As a member of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICAAN) which doles out domain names, Cerf joked that this was a headache for the internet in space.