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http://www.shuilongs.com/cerf.html |
 | Cerf Page |
There is an interesting story behind why Internet Spelunking Masters, Extreme Power Navigating Cerfers, and UAS-S Internet students wisely call it CERFING the internet
versus the overly misused SURF that the medias find good advertising
hype.In 1973 Vinton Cerf, a UCLA graduate student and called the "Father of the Internet", and Robert Kahn, an MIT math professor, developed a set of software "protocols" to enable different types of computers to exchange packets. The result, TCP/IP. TCP - Transmission Control Protocol - converts message into packet streams and reassembles them. IP- Internet Protocol - transports the packets across different nodes, even different types of networks.Since Cerf has suffered severe hearing loss since birth and has worn a hearing aid since he was fourteen, it's serendipitous but fitting that his TCP/IP made possible the text-based Net communications systems so popular today, including electronic mail, discussion lists, file indexing, and hyper-text. Think of it... a virtually deaf man created the protocols that allow you and I today to communicate on a world wide basis!
E-mail, of course, is the most widely used of the Basic Net services. At first scientists used e-mail to collaborate on research projects. There were rules to obey. ARPA limited use of the network to official business.
Soon, however, a graduate-student hacker attitude took over. Mailing-list software was created, permitting large groups of people to discuss common interests, making e-mail a mass medium as well as a point-to-point one. The first list, SF-Lovers, linked science fiction fans (of course!).
By the mid-1980's TCP/IP was linking ARPAnet to other networks, including the NSFnet of the National Science Foundation, and Usenet. The result was first called ARPA-Internet and then simply, the Internet.In 1990 ARPAnet shut down and NSFnet went off-line in April of 1995. Since then, the routes of the information superhighway are in private hands. Nearly all the various networks use the TCP/IP language.Once, at a major computer convention Cerf, a natty dresser who favors three-piece suits, disrobed to display this message on his T-shirt:Master Power Cerfers know that when we peruse the Internet looking, searching, seeking Knowledge we are CERFING and thus paying homage to Vinton Cerf, The Father of the Internet. Our teeshirts and documents always proudly proclaim:![[blue bar]](images/bluegrad.gif){kind=small}
Portions of the above document were reprinted from:Edwin Diamond and Stephen Bates. "The Ancient History Of The Internet" . American Heritage, October 1995.
Where He's At Right Now:
Read the recent (7-6-98) People/Yahoo IChat conversation with Cerf that Shui Long was honored to be a part of:
Read a few articles that the man himself wrote:
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