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Vint Ìý ÌýSo let's err talk a little bit about how one comes to the design of the internet. This wasn't something that err you woke up one morning and said ahh, ha, I know how to build the internet. ÌýIt was more a question of being forced in the right direction by the basic problem statement. So the problem lies multiple packets switch nets each of which different in detail the packets were different sizes, the rate at which they could move was vary depending on whether it was an optical fibre or a satellite link or a normal radio err so we had speed and size and the wave variations too. ÌýBecause when we had to all the way up to the satellite and down it took a quarter of a second one way and another quarter of a second back the round trip time on the satellite system was a half a second compared to micro seconds on a Ethernet which is a piece of .......... cable. Erm at the time so err our problem was how to link these various nets together without changing any of the nets and the tactic that we decided to use is called encapsulation err we have the first problem was that the networks each of them did not know about the others. So there was no wave for sound on, one network we you'd send this packet this little postcard to another network cause you couldn't even say what the other networks name was or it's identifier. So we had to invent an address space that would work across and arbitrary large number of networks. Then we had to decide exactly what the procedures were for end to end communication between two computers on these different networks. So we would take these internet packets and we would encapsulate them in the format of each network and as they went through err, the underlying network they would pop out at a place we would call a gateway. That's a computer that knew how to talk to each of the two nets it was connecting. And as it got to the Ìý Ìýgateway this internet packet was popped out of it's err, network envelope so to speak and examined by the router to say where is it supposed to go next and it would look at the internet address and say oh it needs to go that gateway on another network. It would re encapsulate this internet packet err in the protocol of the next network carry it to the next gateway and pop it out and, and continue until you got to the last half where you delivered the packet to a computer at the end. ÌýSo err fine, the best analogy I can think or for explaining how this works is really seriously think about what you know of postcards. Postcards have a from address and a to address, and then they have some content. ÌýThat's the same as the truth is, the same is true of an internet packet. When you put a postcard in the post-box there is no guarantee that it actually comes out the other end. The post office doesn't guarantee delivery but it tries really hard. It's Ìýcalled best efforts communication. If you put two postcards in the post-box they don't necessarily come out then in the same order that you put them in. so that means that there's potentially disorder with your delivery and that's also true in the internet. Err in some cases the internet might deliver two copies of the same postcard because Ìýit might replicate how it needs to go and different paths because it re transmitted one of them. So you may be more than one copy err you know you would think err that this, this is a, terribly inefficient way of using a system. Why would you ever want an unreliable non guaranteed service? And the answer is well you really don't, what you want is something that makes them all flow smoothly and get err delivered in the right order. So the TCP protocol which is on top of the internet protocol puts things back in order, re transmits in the ........... that's kind of like, what would happen if you were sending a book to a friend. And the postal service only would do it with postcards. So you would ask yourself how do I send this book to my friend? ÌýWell first of all you have to cut the pages out of the book and then cut them up until they fit on the postcards. Then you'd notice that the postcards may not be delivered in order so you'd number every postcard, 1,2 ,3, ,4 5 then you'd remember that some of the postcards may be lost so you keep copies. Then you start sending postcards and then you wonder how do I know if I should send another copy of a postcard, how do I know if one has been lost and you get he idea that your friend should send you a postcard every once in a while saying I got all the postcards up to number 420. at that point you can throw away the copies you have because you know your friend got that far. Erm but if you hear nothing err, at all err then you'd say well you know it was his response must have been lost I'm going to start transmitting postcards that haven't been acknowledged yet and so that's how the basic system works, TCP and IP discipline the network into a nice smooth stream. ÌýErm that's, there's more to it than that but that's sort of the basic idea.Ìý

Intvr Ìý 00.16.35 Ìý Ìý Ìý ÌýIn terms of the open architecture what why did that happen?Ìý

Vint Ìý Ìý00.16.40 Ìý Ìý Ìý ÌýThe openness of the internet in part was a consequence of not knowing what application it was going to be supporting. We were very careful to make as few assumptions as possible, so that new ideas and new ways of using this technology could be injected into the system without having to change every single network, that made it this gigantic global network of networks. ÌýThat's turned out to serve us extremely well. So that network itself doesn't know what each packet is carrying Ìýit doesn't' know whether the bits it he packet are video or audio or a piece of a web page or part of an email and the packets themselves have no idea how they're being carried though the system so they don't care whether they're being carried in an optical fibre or a satellite link or a radio connection. The nice thing about Ìý that internet protocol layer is that it isolates the application from the underlying transport. And that has kept the internet open and able to ingest new technologies and able to support new applications for the last 30 years.Ìý

Intvr Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Were you aware as you worked on the development of the internet that it would have no central control erm, and ultimately be quite difficult to shut down?

Vint Ìý ÌýWell part of my motivation when I was working at the internet was exactly to err build a system that did not have any central control recall that this was being supported by the US defence department, and one of the things that the defence department wants is highly reliable and resilient systems. One way to achieve that is to not have any central place that could be attacked and destroyed in therefore interfere with the operation of the net. So the consequence of this err this, err I would say decentralised architecture is that it is highly resilient to a variety of impairments and in consequence of that it's very hard for anybody to shut the internet down entirely.

Intvr Ìý Governments all over the world for lots of reasons like to control the flow of information erm, did you foresee the way in which the internet could be a threat to governments and to authority?

Vint Ìý ÌýErm, I don't know that at the time that we were developing this we were thinking in political terms err certainly while I was at Darper during my six year tenure there, I was thinking of terms of how to build the system I the military could use and thinking in war time conditions erm, the politics of the situation are quite distinct from making sure the system works no matter where it is, physical components are. So the internet was designed with a non national structure the addressing is not based on national boundaries at all. It's simply based on topology. Err however as the internet evolved Ìýand as it became available to the general public which didn't happen Ìýreally until the early 1990s err it became more and more apparent that the internet's s, style of operation was the ........... of what most Ìýcountries had been accustomed to. Ìýin fact in the early days telephony and telegraphy there was only one network and it was often advantaged Ìýby and operated by the government giving it substantial control. So I rather liked the idea, that the internet didn't have that let me call it deficiency and therefore open a platform up it's probably the most democratic, opportunity for people to express themselves and to get information that has ever existed. Ìý

Intvr ÌýAnd you're erm, 2006 submission to the senate, what was the gist about erm, maintaining that neutrality what did you mean by net Ìýneutrality?

Vint Ìý Ìý Net neutrality is a term which is created a considerable amount of debate and controversy of my erm, intention in using that term was simply to say the network erm, access by users and by providers of applications should not be in any way erm, constrained except possibly erm, by capacity. ÌýWe understand that you .......... available but I don't think that the supplier of a broadband service, should be able to interfere in some anti competitive way with the users ability to get to any application anywhere on the internet. ÌýThat's the player of broadband access should not favour his or her own applications in err, err in competition with others. Everyone should have equal access to the, facilities, erm, it, it's the possibility of discriminatory Ìýbehaviour that raised my concern in the term net neutrality refers basically to a, erm, a non discriminatory access to the internet. Some people have twisted that around to say well you don't to err charge more for more use of capacity or you don't want to allow us to err filter out err deny our service attacks or you don't want us to filter out spend, those are all false assertions, they're ...........all that I'm interested and most of my colleagues, are, interested in is Ìýto make sure that any one who has new idea had the opportunity up on the internet try it out whether other people get access to it. you think about Yahoo and Google and err eBay and Amazon and Skype and many others they didn't have to get permission from every internet service provider in the entire world before they brought up their applications. They simply got it a, acquired access to the internet through an ISP and then made those services available and anyone was free to try them out. ÌýThat's what net neutrality and none discriminatory access is all about.

Intvr Ìý What did you think when you first encounter Tim Berners Lee's world wide web?Ìý

Vint Ìý Ìý Well interestingly enough I did not know about Tim's work. ÌýUntil erm, after he had done erm, the original implementation if I remembering right it was something like Christmas in 1990. that his first implementations of the world wide web were available from ........... err I didn't know much about that at all or anything until err Mark and Greeson and Eric Beno built their version which they called mosaic from the national centre for super computer applications and the university in Illinois, and .............. this got everyone's attention because it was a graphical interface it was quite eye-catching err the imagery that we got from the, from the internet at that point was not just text but we received erm, images like a magazine. ÌýThat turned everyone on, because it changed the nature of the medium from a purely text err system err to something that involved Ìýerr images as well. Err my, recollection is that there were a million downloads Ìýof the mosaic's software almost immediately you know within the first couple of weeks. Ìýso err all of us got very excited about that. Of course Tim's working out how we can become extremely visible err then err the general public still they didn't know anything about this. Until 1994, and that's because Jim Clark who was one of the founders of Silicon Graphics err took Eric Pernar and err Mark and Rhys went out to the west coast to start what was called net scape communications. ÌýAnd in a, a bit of erm, irony erm, this, this all happened in 1994 that's the year I joined MCI in order to build an Ìýinternet service for them. We also built and err what we call the MCI mall basically was an internet shopping mall. In 1994, we went out to Netscape communications in order to use their browser and server software to build our MCI mall application. This is 1994, and frankly I think we were about 10 years ahead of our time. ÌýIn terms of the erm, err available community out there, that was using the internet. Err none the less erm, Tim's work has had a dramatic effect on people's interest in pushing information into the net and sharing it with everyone. In fact it was such an avalanche of information Ìýthat you couldn't find anything out there any more and so you needed err search engines like AltaVista and WAYS the wider information service and eventually err Yahoo and then Google and of course many others since then.

Intvr Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý It is just human nature that hierarchies and elites emerge on the web?Ìý

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Vint Ìý Ìý Err the internet invites a great deal of collaboration and in most people are free to introduce err content where, whenever they want to. of course a web site can resist that if it wants to but the an example of Wikipedia is a, is a good one. Erm, it, it's a essentially invited anyone who had a piece of information to share or to make an entry into Wikipedia to put some content in but it also allowed anyone else who wanted to err edit that to augment it to correct mistakes and so on to do so. I don't see this as a, as the creation of a hierarchy as much as I see this as a highly collorative err environment. And recently Wikipedia has decided to put some controls on content particularly for people who's err Ìýbiographical information is on line. I mean we're still alive and I think part of the reason for that is that err some people might be erm, err tempted to err, err say enhance their biographical content erm, erm, and perhaps not to err to be fully accurate. Now on, on the other hand we do see, err an interesting spiral effect that shows up. When something Ìýbecomes popular on the internet it often spreads very, very quickly we some of this happened with u tube for instance. ÌýIt started out as a very small operation with a couple of guys with that wanted to help people upload video. Now I'm told that 23 hours of video are uploaded per minute into the U Tube system and I have no idea how many hours per minute are being watched by everybody else. But the same sorts of phenomenon show up and you see Ìýerm, a, a kind of rapid spiral twitter is another example of that. Once and idea gets popular on the net it grows very quickly because it's so easy to get access, to those new applications. ÌýAnd that's probably one of the most important erm, aspects of the internet it's easy for people to get access to Ìýnew applications. Google believes that and I believe that our platforms the internet, mobiles and others should be as open as possible to allow exactly that phenomenon to exist.

Intvr Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý Ìý IN the long run do you think the web, the internet will make governments redundant with cause people are using to take power into their own hands?

Vint Ìý Ìý Some people might worry that err, there is too much freedom, to individuals using the internet, that err somehow governments will disappear because people will be able to do whatever they want to. I don't think that's a likely outcome frankly err the internet exists in the real world. it exists in a society that we all inhabit and a multiple societies, multiple cultures err it's absolutely you know essential to understand that the Ìýinternet and the notion of cyber space is not divorced from the real world. Ìýwe live in the real world the internet lives in the real world, our direction is with each other, we're not in some fictitious erm, you know strange planet somewhere else they are a part of the world we live in. it's essential that we live in a world of love because energy is not a good (laughs) path for civilisation to pursue. I don't think the internet will contribute to energy I think it will contribute to collaborative development of our civilisation.Ìý