Vint Cerf

has been called the Father of the Internet for the work he did in the early days of DARPAnet. Now as MCI's senior vice president of Internet architecture, he's looking ahead to help define what the network of the future will be.

In this two-part interview with Paul Schindler, Cerf talks about the Net he helped create, what could bring it to a stop, and how it might reach further into our lives (and into outer space) than it already does. (Recorded Oct. 22, 1997.)

» read interview
» read interview part 2
» hear interview
Job
Senior Vice President, Internet Architecture and Engineering, MCI

Home
Camelot, Va. Married 31 years. Two sons.

Education
BA in Mathematics, Stanford, 1965; MA and Ph.D. in Computer Science, UCLA

UPDATE -- "Father of Internet" Criticizes Feds’ Domain Plan (February 3, 1998)
First Computer
In 1960, worked with a Bendix G-15 with punched paper tape input and output

First time on the Internet
"We did some two-network demonstrations and ArpaNet work in 1975, but the first time there were three networks on the Internet was November, 1977. I helped build it."

Optimistic statement about the Internet
"The Internet will exceed the scale and capacity of the telephone network sometime in the latter half of the next decade. Ultimately there will be more devices on the Internet than there are people in the world."

Pessimistic statement about the Internet
"We won't figure out how to handle the growth in demand for capacity on the Net, the vendors won't be able to supply us with routers and switches that will go at gigabit speeds, and the whole shootin' match runs out of gas sometime in the next two years."