Q&A with Internet founders Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn ahead of upcoming Presidential Lecture Series

Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn, the researchers credited with the seminal work during the 1970s that led to the creation of the Internet a half-century ago, will join Purdue University President Mung Chiang for a Presidential Lecture Series event at 6 p.m. Sept. 7 in Stewart Center’s Fowler Hall.

The Presidential Lecture, which is free and open to the public, coincides with the 60th anniversary celebration of Purdue’s historic launch of the nation’s first academic computer science department and the 50th anniversary of the Internet’s launch in January 1983. The Cerf-Kahn event is titled “Origins of the Internet and Its Subsequent Evolution.” Tickets are required. Go here for ticketing information. The full fall Presidential Lecture series schedule is available here.

Cerf and Kahn led the design and implementation of what formed the basis of the Internet, beginning with their groundbreaking research paper during the mid-1970s. Titled “A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication,” the paper was subsequently published in the IEEE Transactions on Communications in May 1974 and outlined the resulting Internet architecture for the technological innovation that’s ubiquitous today. They coined the concept of “internetting” in discussing how to interconnect networks.

Sixty years ago, Purdue celebrated the launch of its groundbreaking computer science program when it dedicated its new high-speed IBM 7090 digital computer. Today, Purdue’s computer science program is the largest and most selective undergraduate major on campus, with 2,207 undergraduate and 496 graduate students enrolled as of Fall 2022.

Together, Cerf and Kahn graciously answered a few questions posed to them in advance of their upcoming conversation on the Purdue campus with President Chiang.

Q: Why did you say yes to President Mung’s invitation to come to Purdue University as part of our first Presidential Lecture Series event in the 2023-24 academic year?

Cerf and Kahn: First, it is fortuitous that the invitation to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the original work on the Internet arrived about the time of year we actually presented our ideas to a group that met in September 1973 at the University of Sussex. That material was the basis for an IEEE paper that we wrote, which was published in May 1974. It described the overall architecture and protocols for what became the Internet. It also was the starting point for detailed protocol design work that began in January 1974 at Stanford with a group of Vint’s graduate students. Second, because the work was so focused on computer communication, it seemed to us similarly fortuitous that Purdue established the first computer science department in the U.S. in October 1962. 

Q: Fifty years removed from the collaborations that set in motion your seminal breakthrough leading to the creation of the Internet, how do you put into words how history has viewed your achievement in an innovation that has become so integral and indispensable to our everyday lives today?

Cerf and Kahn: We have been showered with awards, but both of us are very cognizant that many hands have contributed to the work both before our involvement and subsequent to the operational rollout of the system in early 1983. The ability of this design to accommodate new ideas from many sources, to expand in scale by six or more orders of magnitude, and to incite continued innovation was perhaps the most satisfying aspect. The arrival of the World Wide Web in 1991 and the smartphone in 2007, both of which have become integral elements of the Internet of 2023, reinforces the notion that the design has empowered many to contribute and for the system to thrive. While the enabling power of the Internet also has amplified some harmful behaviors that need to be contained, on balance, the positives strongly outweigh the negatives. We are both persuaded that accountability must become a more integral part of the governance of the system, and that is going to require international cooperation. 

Q: Looking back on your impressive careers, what is one thing you would tell your undergraduate college selves that might be meaningful to them and, perhaps, would resonate with our many Purdue students who will be sitting in the PLS audience for your lecture?

Cerf and Kahn: First lesson: If you want to do something big, get help! Preferably from people who are smarter than you are. An enormous amount of help has been provided by others in evolving the Internet from its origins to its present state. Many successful, independent commercial and academic initiatives have been launched, using the Internet as infrastructure and scaffolding. 

Second lesson: As systems of this kind scale up, institutional elements become necessary and have been created as needed. Examples here include the Internet Architecture Board (IAB and its predecessors), the Internet Engineering and Research Taskforces (IETF, IRTF), the Internet Society (ISOC), the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the DNS Root Server community, the Internet Governance Forum (and regional/national IGFs), the Regional Internet Registries (ARIN, RIPE-NCC, APNIC, LACNIC, AFRINIC), the original SRI-NIC, the ARPANET Internet Network Working Groups, the Request for Comments (RFCs) documentation series, and the list goes on.

Third lesson: Humility has been a friend in this endeavor — willingness to listen to others, empower them to explore and to change views at need. This has allowed so many new ideas to be tested and many to flourish.

Fourth lesson: Standardization has been a key to success. Many different standards organizations have contributed to the interoperability of so many components of today’s Internet. IETF, IEEE-SA, ITU-T, ISO, 3GPP, W3C and many others have produced standards that are used to make the Internet what it has become.  

Finally, it is important to trust your instincts. Many people saw no future in computer networking back when most computers were still the large batch machines. Those who could envision a new environment of interactive computers — whether large time-sharing systems or even smaller desktops, laptops or handheld wireless devices — knew that networking had great potential if it could be made a reality. Financial help came early on from DARPA, which sponsored this effort over 50 years ago, but it was so important to just stay the course.

About the Presidential Lecture Series

Launched in 2014 by then-Purdue President Mitch Daniels and continued in 2023 by President Mung Chiang, the Presidential Lecture Series exposes Purdue students and the broader community to inspiring ideas, courageous leadership and models of civic engagement and civil discourse. The Presidential Lecture Series has hosted over 40 guests of many viewpoints and perspectives who have hosted some of the great intellectual, business and civic leaders of our time. As one of the world’s premier centers of scholarly leadership, Purdue is – appropriately and necessarily – a regular venue for great thinkers across a wide variety of disciplines.