Transcript Robert (Bob) E. Kahn

Robert (Bob) E. Kahn
Inventor of the Internet
Background Information
Born in Brooklyn, New York on December 23, 1938
Earned M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton University
Worked on the Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories
Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT
After leaving MIT, joined Bolt Beranek and Newman, where he was
responsible for system design of the ARPANET, first packetswitched network
In 1972, moved to U.S. Department of Defense's Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and became Director of
DARPA’s Information Processing Techniques Office
Initiated the United States government's billion dollar Strategic
Computing Program, the largest computer research and
development program ever undertaken by federal government
Chairman, CEO and President of the Corporation for National
Research Initiatives (CNRI)
Some Awards Kahn Received:
American Federation of Information Processing Societies
(AFIPS) Harry Goode Memorial Award
Marconi Award
President’s Award from Association for Computing
Machinery (ACM)
ACM SICOMM Award
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
(IEEE) Koji Kobayashi Computer and Communications
Award
IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal
IEEE Third Millennium Medal
ACM Software Systems Award
Some Recent Info on Kahn:
Developed concept of digital object
infrastructure as a main component of the
National Information Infrastructure
Co-inventor of Knowbot programs – mobile
software agents in the network environment
Member of National Academy of Engineering
Fellow of the IEEE, American Association for
Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), and ACM
Origins of the Internet:
First recorded description
of the social interactions
enabled through
networking written by
Licklider of MIT
Lawrence Roberts went
to DARPA to develop
the computer network
concept and put
together his plan for
“ARPANET”
1964
1962
Network Working Group
finished the initial Host-to-Host
protocol, called the Network
Control protocol
1969
1966
First book on packet
switching theory published
by Leonard Kleinrock at
MIT
1972
1970
First host computer
connected at UCLA
Kahn organized large and
successful demonstration of
the ARPANET at the
International Computer
Communication Conference.
It was the first public
demonstration of this new
network technology to the
public
What is the internet?
The Internet is a world-wide network of computers that
utilizes TCP/IP network protocols to facilitate data
transmission and exchange. A set of network conventions
and common tools are employed to give the appearance of a
single large network.
What does this mean?
The Internet is a very large network that connects millions of
computers, people, software programs, databases, and files.
Any two connected computers can be considered a network.
How two computers are connected through the Internet:
A more detailed diagram of how computers are connected through
the Internet:
So how does it work?
Each computer is given a unique IP address. The
IP address tells each computer where data comes
from or where it needs to be sent. Data
transmission is first translated from alphabetic text
into electronic signals with the use of a protocol
stack. The protocol stack used on the Internet is
referred to as the TCP/IP protocol stack. Data is
then sent to a Internet Service Provider (ISP). Next,
data travels through several other networks that the
ISP is connected to until it reaches its destination.
What did Kahn do?
He started out with four goals which would lead to the Transmission
Control Protocol (TCP):
Network connectivity - any network could connect to other various
networks through a gateway
Distribution - there would be no central network administration or
control
Error recovery - lost packet would be retransmitted
Black box design - no internal changes would have to be made to a
network to connect it to other networks
In 1973, Vinton Cerf, another co-founder of the Internet, joined Kahn
with his project. Together they developed the next generation TCP.
TCP and the Internet:
Internet is mainly layered of two protocols: TCP/IP.
TCP handles high level services such as
retransmission of last packets while IP handles
packet addressing and transmission. TCP was
extremely useful because it had powerful error and
retransmission capabilities, providing highly reliable
communications.
How is the Internet Important?
Allows individuals to post and update
information frequently for others to access
Allows exchange of electronic mail (E-mail) with
friends and colleagues with accounts on the
Internet
Gives access multimedia information that
includes sound, photographic images, and
videos
Gives access to diverse perspectives from
around the world