Creator of the Internet Explains How He’d Reinvent it Now

Vinton Cerf – the recognised ‘father’ of the internet – while proud of what he helped create, has outlined how, given the chance of a do-over, he would revise the technology. Cerf has explained how he wishes he’d have included 128-bit address space to prevent the current ordeal of switching  from the 32-bit IPv4 addressing system to IPv6, plus the addition of public key cryptography.

“If I could have justified it, putting in a 128-bit address space would have been nice so we wouldn’t have to go through this painful, 20-year process of going from IPv4 to IPv6,” Cerf told the audience at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum, Germany (via PC World).

However, Cerf admits that neither 128-bit addresses nor public key cryptography would have been feasible inclusions at the time. “I doubt I could have gotten away with either one,” he admitted. “So today we have to retrofit.”

On the 128-bit address space, he says, it “wouldn’t have seemed realistic back then,” and, “I don’t think we could have forced that.” Even though variable-length addresses were debated at the time, it was all but a pipe dream considering the processing power required to support them wasn’t feasible. “Because computers were so expensive back then, we rejected the idea,” Cerf lamented.

Public key cryptography, though, was a relatively new concept when internet protocols were being standardised in 1978, so including it would have meant rewriting those protocols. “I didn’t want to go back and retrofit everything, so we didn’t include it,” Cerf said. “If I could go back and put in public key crypto, I probably would try.”