A team from the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University asked Internet Hall of Fame inductees and Internet Society and global IT leaders to identify challenges and opportunities of Internet evolution.
Four hours of content: Dai Davies, Mike Roberts, Dennis Jennings, Susan Estrada, Demi Getschko, Paul Vixie, Hualin Qian, Eric Huizer, John Cioffi, Karlheinz Brandenberg, Ben Segal and 17 others share about their experiences and their hopes for the future. Use the video viewer to see their responses. Click on the first video to begin a player that will cycle through all visible on this page or click on those you wish to view. To see additional videos, click on the numbers at the end of the video column – there are many more than you see here.
The videos linked in the player below are a series of 3-to-18-minute interviews with 28 leaders of Internet evolution past, present and future, including more than a dozen Internet Hall of Fame inductees and other top leaders from the Internet Society (ISOC) and other global IT organizations.
Interview participants were in Hong Kong April 7-9, 2014, for the Internet Hall of Fame Induction, Internet Society events and the global IT Fest. They were asked to talk about their roles in
Internet leadership and they were encouraged to share anecdotes about their work in the evolution of the Internet.
At the end of each interview they talk about their greatest concerns and hopes for the future evolution of networked communications and any possible action steps they might suggest to encourage the best possible future.
Interviewees include the following 2014 Hall of Fame inductees or their representatives
Eric Allman has been instrumental in mail transfer and standardization and was the first to make Internet addresses highly configurable. He also created syslog, the defacto standard logging mechanism.
Karlheinz Brandenburg is the driving force behind MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 (MP3) and MPEG audio standards. His work has been crucial to the early years of Internet audio coding.
John Cioffi is known as the “father of DSL,” and it was his work that made the digital subscriber line possible, accounting for about 98% of the world’s more than 500 million DSL connections.
Dai Davies introduced Internet technology to the pan-European backbone, EuropaNet, in 1991, and has since been a leader in development and innovation of the Internet and research networks across Europe.
Christina Engelbart, daughter of inductee Douglas Engelbart, inducted for his pioneering work in augmenting the human intellect and the human-computer interface. He also founded ARPAnet’s Network Information Center.
Susan Estrada, founder of CERFnet, one of the original regional IP networks, in 1988. She also assisted in establishing the first commercial Internet traffic and authored the best-seller “Connecting to the Internet” in 1993.
Demi Getschko was a key leader in the team that established the Internet in Brazil and he has been instrumental in Brazil’s Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br) since 1995.
Mika Hirabaru and Maemura Akinnori, speaking on behalf of inductee Masaki Hirabaru, who played a key role in the formation of the Japan Network Information Center and the Asia Pacific Network Information Center.
Eric Huizer was the first author of the first Request for Comments to document the Internet Engineering Task Force standards process and procedures of IETF Working Groups, and he led the Internet Architecture Board introduction of the use of cryptography in protocols.
Abhaya Induruwa pioneered academic and research networking and Internet deployment in Sri Lanka in the late 1980s despite many obstacles, including two civil wars at the time and limited resources.
Dennis Jennings was the first program director for Networking at the US National Science Foundation in 1985-86, developing a vision of a network of networks – an Internet – to serve research and higher education.
Irine Misoi, speaking on behalf of inductee Dorcas Muthoni, the CEO and founder of OPENWORLD, delivering Web and cloud applications in Africa. Muthoni is also founder of a capacity-building initiative for African women.
Radia Perlman has worked since the 1980s to design robust, scalable and easy-to-manage routing protocols, allowing people to share information with ease. She is expert in trust models and a coauthor of “Network Security.”
Mahabir Pun founded the Nepal Wireless Networking Project and has worked since the 1990s to establish the Internet in rural schools, promote digital literacy and improve education.
Hualin Qian led the team that completed the first Internet connection from China to the US in 1994, and that same year he and his team completed construction of China’s top-level domain, .cn.
Srinivasan Ramani helped launch the Indian Academic Network in 1983 and coordinated ERNET for India’s National Center for Software Technology, eventually helping to spread Internet access across India.
Michael Roberts was the first president and CEO of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), serving from 1988 to 2001. He earlier was a vice president at the academic network EDUCOM.
Ben Segal enabled the Web’s development by coordinating TCP/IP’s adoption within the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) from 1984-1988. He helped spearhead the adoption of IP in Europe, and he assisted Tim Berners-Lee with design decisions prior to his invention of the World Wide Web.
Douglas Van Houweling was a top leader of the early growth and transition of the NSFnet national backbone in the US from a mostly academic network to one that was open to all, including commercial providers, in the mid-1990s.
Paul Vixie has been instrumental in Domain Name System (DNS) protocol extensions and applications used today, including dynamic update, network reputation and BIND open-source software, allowing the DNS to scale.
Additional top Internet leaders interviewed:
(To see the video interviews, use the player above.)
Scott Bradner, longtime Internet Society leader and technology security officer at Harvard University.
Keith Davidson, Internet Society trustee and international director of InternetNZ.
Ir Daniel Lai, government chief information officer of Hong Kong.
Jason Livingood, Internet Society trustee and vice president of Internet Systems Engineering for Comcast.
Michael Kende, chief economist for the Internet Society.
Charles Mok, legislative councillor of Hong Kong and longtime Internet Society leader.
Chester Soong, chairman of the Internet Society chapter in Hong Kong.
Andreu Veà, president of the Internet Society chapter in Spain.
Click here to view acceptance speeches from the Internet Society’s 2014 Hall of Fame Induction
– Internet Hall of Fame 2014 video interviews were conducted by Mia Watkins, Jason Puckett, Brian Mezerski, Sky Cowans and Addie Haney, researchers from Elon University’s School of Communications, under the supervision of Anthony Hatcher, associate professor, Aaron Moger, university video producer, and Janna Anderson, associate professor and director of Imagining the Internet.
