Part 1

Could only one person invent something as massive as the Internet or the World wide Web? Two individuals who are often linked with these achievements are Vint Cerf, who has been called the father of the Internet, and Sir Tim Berners Lee, credited with inventing the World Wide Web. But what exactly did each person do to earn these titles that have been bestowed upon them?

Vint Cerf

http:/www.rit.edu/~jaf7239/320/project1/images/cerf.jpg [Accessed February 12th 05]

While as a graduate student at UCLA, Vint first became involved with the pre Internet Arpanet as one of the founding members of the Network Working Group (NWG). This group was one of the many groups that were set up by the builders of the Arpanet, a company by the name of Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN). These groups were to act as representatives and were given the vague task of overseeing the setup and connection of minicomputers or IMPs, (Information Message Processors) that would serve as Nodes on the network. While there, Vint Cerf helped develop the NCP or Network Control Protocol. This Protocol allowed the individual IMPs on the Arpanet to communicate to one another.

It was because of Vints work on the original protocol that he was asked by Robert Kahn of Arpa to help him with 'internetting', or joining the Arpanet to other Networks that had appeared around this time. The problem they faced was that these other networks all had their own individual protocols and were not compatible with one another. To help solve this problem Robert Kahn set up a meeting with all the researchers of these networks, and it was during this conference that the International Network Working Group (INWG) was formed and Vint Cerf was made chairman.

Vint eventually solved the internetting problem by coming up with the idea of a 'Gateway'. A Gateway was a computer that would achieve a fast and seamless network connection by only taking the data packets from one network and handing them off to another. This differed from the role of the IMP's, which were responsible for getting the packets reliably to their destination. The implications of this was that any number of networks could then be added to this 'network of networks'

To develop this concept further Vint used his graduate students at Stanford University (where he had taken an assistant professorship position) as research assistants. Then After a meeting with the INWG to refine his idea further, Both Cerf and Kahn went to write a paper to outline how the protocol for these Gateways would work. This was eventually published in an Engineering journal titled 'a protocol for packet network interconnection' in 1974. Although a joint effort, it was because of a coin toss the name Vint Cerf and not Robert Kahn appeared on the bottom of the paper. And this is most likely why he earned the title of father of the Internet by the media. This Protocol, Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) was developed further by John Schock (one of Vint's former students at Stanford University) at Xerox Park in their work on Networks and Ethernet, and was eventually broken into two main protocols, TCP and IP (Internet Protocol).

Sir Tim Berners lee

http://www.lcs.mit.edu/people/bioimages/berners-lee.gif [Accessed February 12th 05].

Tim Berners Lee created the World Wide Web out of a need to organize the vast amounts of Information at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) where he worked as a consultant. Also at CERN was there was a vast turnover of scientists doing highly complex experiments and research there,and the problem was they would leave little information on what they had done. Or that the information was there, but could not be found. Tim realized what was needed to keep CERN organized was some type of a linked information system.

Tim proposed a Solution to CERN that was based on a 'hypertext' system, and he believed CERN's special requirements were to

In creating the Hypertext browser system, Tim used many of the concepts developed within the Hypertext community where the concept of linked navigation had been previously addressed with software like Xerox's Notecards system. The Ideas on Hypertext and the browser programs eventually wound up being posted on newsgroups like alt.hypertext and comp.sys.net, and in January 1991 the line-mode browser was made available at the CERN website to be downloaded by anyone with a connection to the Internet. Tim eventually left CERN and formed the WWW consortium.

Discussion

Perhaps Vint Cerf and Tim Berners Lee's biggest contribution to the Web and the Internet was not so much in what they did, but in the spirit of the way that they went about it. Vint Cerf in the collaborative way he and the rest of the Students of the NWG's went about writing the first protocols, and then later as chairman of the IWNG in working to create the first Inter - Network protocol. A product of this new co-operative method of creating software was the RFC's, or 'requests for comments' which are still used to this day in defining the working protocols of the Internet, of which Vint Cerf wrote many of the earliest. It could be proposed that this was the beginning of what is known as 'the open source movement'. Summed up by Dave Clark of MIT when he once commented about "We reject: kings, presidents and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code." T171 Module 2 Section 3.4, Evolving the network protocols, [Online] Open University, Available from http://t171.open.ac.uk/t17104j/html/module2/section3/evolving.cfm [Accessed 10 February 05].
Sir Tim Berners Lee then continued this philosophy by first putting out an RFC on his proposal, and then posting his ideas on the Usenet system and allowing his software to be freely downloaded by anyone that could connect to the CERN computers. From the beginning Tim firmly believed that the World Wide Web should remain an open standard for all to use

Conclusion

Though Vint Cerf's contributions to the Internet have been immense, and he deserves great credit for what he has done, I don't feel one person alone deserves the title 'Father of the Internet'. Though perhaps he may have a claim to being the father of 'Inter-networking' for his brilliant idea of the Gateway. Likewise, Sir Tim Berners Lee conceptually invented the World Wide Web, but it was with the help of people like Robert Calliau who co wrote the first RFC proposal, and Marc Andreeseeen who improved upon Tim's HTML protocol by developing the image <IMG> capability.
To bestow these titles on Tim and Vint invalidates the contributions of all the individuals who came before them in developing the technology used, contributed to the Internet and the Web in the many working groups and RFC's, and continually improved upon Vint and Tims work. Though to their credit none of this could have happened had they not opted to work in such an open manner and freely publish their findings.
Perhaps it is John Naughton who sums it up best when he says ' to some extent the airbrushing of historical records is inevitable, for what is going on is a myth. And Myths need heroes - single handed slayers of dragons rather then networking groups, co - authors and other actors that might dilute the glory' . Naughton, J. (1999), A Brief History of the Future, London, Phoenix