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Network Geeks Brian E. Carpenter NETWORK GEEKS How they Built the Internet An Imprint of Springer Science + Business Media Brian E. Carpenter Auckland, New Zealand ISBN 978-1-4471-5024-4 ISBN 978-1-4471-5025-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4471-5025-1 Springer London Heidelberg New York Dordrecht Library of Congress Control Number: 2013932231 © Springer-Verlag London 2013 Published in the United States by Copernicus Books, an imprint of Springer Science+Business Media. Copernicus Books Springer Science+Business Media 233 Spring Street New York, NY 10013 www.springer.com This work is subject to copyright. 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Violations are liable to prosecution under the respective Copyright Law. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) To Margaret, who put up with it all. Preface I was extraordinarily lucky to be born when and where I was. Of all the times and places to arrive, 1946 in Britain was perfectly placed to benefi t from the affl uent society, universal health care and the best years of the British education system. English turned out to be a good choice as a native language, and I was well advised to pick computing as a career path in 1966 and to specialise in computer networking from 1985. I was also very fortunate to have the opportunity to work at CERN, then without a doubt the most successful example of large-scale international intellectual and technical collaboration on the planet. I was again fortunate to take part in the growth of the Internet in Europe, to discover the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in 1992 and to be made so welcome there. Finally, I was fortunate to spend many years rubbing shoulders with some of the engineers who have ridden the Internet roller coaster since then. This book is an attempt to tell you what this professional experience was like and what some of the people were like and to explain enough of the science and technology to make the Internet seem less of a magic trick. At the same time, it covers the history of the Internet as I saw it being built. It isn’t a work of scholarship and is certainly far from a complete history. In a few places, there are technical details, but they can be skipped. Over the last two centuries, there has been a fascinating interaction between events on the world stage, developments in science and technology that led up to the Internet and their impact on ordinary families. I have taken the liberty of using aspects of my own life to illustrate this and to show how somebody of my generation could become a technologist. Auckland , New Zealand Brian E. Carpenter vii Contents 1 Hey Folks! ................................................................................................ 1 2 Before My Time ....................................................................................... 9 3 Where Do Geeks Come From? .............................................................. 27 4 Going Up .................................................................................................. 39 5 In Control. ................................................................................................ 53 6 Two Ivory Towers .................................................................................... 63 7 Diversity ................................................................................................... 79 8 Economy Class ........................................................................................ 97 9 Parallel Universes .................................................................................... 111 10 The Years of Miraculous Growth .......................................................... 127 11 Going Under ............................................................................................ 141 Acknowledgements ......................................................................................... 151 Further Reading .............................................................................................. 153 Index ................................................................................................................. 157 ix