Robert (Bob) E. Kahn Inventor of the Internet

Background Information Born in Brooklyn, New York on December 23, 1938 Earned M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton University Worked on the Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT After leaving MIT, joined Bolt Beranek and Newman, where he was responsible for system design of the ARPANET, first packet- switched network In 1972, moved to U.S. Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and became Director of DARPA’s Information Processing Techniques Office Initiated the United States government's billion dollar Strategic Computing Program, the largest computer research and development program ever undertaken by federal government Chairman, CEO and President of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI)

Some Awards Kahn Received: American Federation of Information Processing Societies (AFIPS) Harry Goode Memorial Award Marconi Award President’s Award from Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) ACM SICOMM Award Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE) Koji Kobayashi Computer and Communications Award IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal IEEE Third Millennium Medal ACM Software Systems Award

Some Recent Info on Kahn: Developed concept of digital object infrastructure as a main component of the National Information Infrastructure Co-inventor of Knowbot programs – mobile software agents in the network environment Member of National Academy of Engineering Fellow of the IEEE, American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), and ACM

Origins of the Internet: First recorded description of the social interactions enabled through networking written by Licklider of MIT First book on packet switching theory published by Leonard Kleinrock at MIT Lawrence Roberts went to DARPA to develop the computer network concept and put together his plan for “ARPANET” 1966 First host computer connected at UCLA 1969 Network Working Group finished the initial Host-to-Host protocol, called the Network Control protocol 1970 Kahn organized large and successful demonstration of the ARPANET at the International Computer Communication Conference. It was the first public demonstration of this new network technology to the public 1972

What is the internet? The Internet is a world-wide network of computers that utilizes TCP/IP network protocols to facilitate data transmission and exchange. A set of network conventions and common tools are employed to give the appearance of a single large network. What does this mean? The Internet is a very large network that connects millions of computers, people, software programs, databases, and files. Any two connected computers can be considered a network.

How two computers are connected through the Internet: A more detailed diagram of how computers are connected through the Internet:

So how does it work ? Each computer is given a unique IP address. The IP address tells each computer where data comes from or where it needs to be sent. Data transmission is first translated from alphabetic text into electronic signals with the use of a protocol stack. The protocol stack used on the Internet is referred to as the TCP/IP protocol stack. Data is then sent to a Internet Service Provider (ISP). Next, data travels through several other networks that the ISP is connected to until it reaches its destination.

What did Kahn do? Network connectivity - any network could connect to other various networks through a gateway Distribution - there would be no central network administration or control Error recovery - lost packet would be retransmitted Black box design - no internal changes would have to be made to a network to connect it to other networks In 1973, Vinton Cerf, another co-founder of the Internet, joined Kahn with his project. Together they developed the next generation TCP. He started out with four goals which would lead to the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP):

TCP and the Internet: Internet is mainly layered of two protocols: TCP/IP. TCP handles high level services such as retransmission of last packets while IP handles packet addressing and transmission. TCP was extremely useful because it had powerful error and retransmission capabilities, providing highly reliable communications.

How is the Internet Important? Allows individuals to post and update information frequently for others to access Allows exchange of electronic mail ( ) with friends and colleagues with accounts on the Internet Gives access multimedia information that includes sound, photographic images, and videos Gives access to diverse perspectives from around the world