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Cerf says Internet lacks essential features
Vinton Cerf urges government and IT industry leaders to take a more active role in addressing the Internet's shortcomings
By Wyatt Kash
Jun 16, 2009
Government Computer News
One of the Internet's founding fathers and modern evangelists, Vinton Cerf, warned a gathering of government and technology industry leaders that the Internet "still lacks many features that it needs," including essential authentication and security tools. But he urged the leaders to support a national broadband policy that provides universal, high-speed Internet access, not merely the availability of broadband communications networks.
Speaking at a Washington reception hosted by the trade group TechAmerica, June 10, Cerf also spoke of the importance of developing new Internet protocols capable of broadcasting information to multiple destinations simultaneously, rather than the current model, designed to send information from point to point.
And he talked about how future solutions for securing ad hoc networks -- a critical challenge for military operations -- may lie in work underway to expand the Internet into outer space. Efforts to overcome extended interruptions in delivering information to remote satellites have led to new protocol designs, he said, adding wryly, "We have the possibility of applying alien technology for our terrestrial requirements."
Cerf, a vice president at Google and its chief Internet evangelist, said that despite the Internet becoming operational in 1983, it remains "incomplete" and lacks many essential features.
"One of the most critical of those features is authentication. ...More...
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