Network geeks: how they built the internet

165 Pages·2013·1.646 MB·English

by  Carpenter, Brian E

Brian E. Carpenter
Network
Geeks
How They Built the Internet
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.
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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
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