A team from the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University asked Internet Hall of Fame inductees and IETF, ISOC and ICANN leaders to identify challenges and opportunities of Internet evolution.
John Perry Barlow, Glenn Ricart, Dave Farber, Richard Stallman, Jun Murai, Kees Neggers, Scott Bradner, Raul Echeberria, Jim Galvin, Rudy Vansnick, Ram Mohan and 13 others share 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 above are a series of 3-to-60-minute interviews with 24 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), the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers(ICANN).
Interview participants were in Berlin August 2 and 3, 2013, for the Internet Hall of Fame Induction, the Internet Society Board Meeting and the 87th meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force. 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 2013 Hall of Fame inductees
John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and author of “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.”
Gihan Dias, instrumental in leading the development of the Internet in Sri Lanka and the surrounding region.
Dave Farber, a leader of the development of CSNet, NSFNET, NREN and the Gigabit Testbed, he is also highly involved in identifying and engendering discussions of key networking issues.
Francios Flückiger, a key figure in the development of the Internet in Europe, currently CERN’s Knowledge Transfer Officer for Information Technologies.
Steve Goldstein, as a leader in the National Science Foundation from 1989 into the 1990s he evaluated and funded Internet initiatives around the world and connected 25 countries to the NSFNET.
Teus Hagen started EUnet in 1982, the first public wide area network, and he chaired the NLnet Foundation from 1992 to 2008. He also enabled the development of the CAcert community and free certificate technology.
Kanchana Kanchanasut, brought the Internet to Thailand and championed it across Southeast Asia.
Tracy Licklider (the son of Hall of Fame inductee J.C.R. Licklider). J.C.R., or “Lick,” as he was known, was a DARPA project manager who wrote memos as early as the 1960s about the development of an “Intergalactic Network.”
Jun Murai, known as the “father of the Internet in Japan,” developed its first university network. He is a longtime leader of ICANN and ISOC. He helped spread the Internet across the Asia Pacific region.
Kees Neggers, helped develop and lead the European Academic Research Network and the global Internet. He was the director of the Dutch SURFnet for more than 20 years.
Glenn Ricart, set up the first Internet Exchange point and led teams writing code for the first implementation of TCP/IP for the IBM PC in the 1980s. He is CTO of US Ignite, catalyzing new applications based on next-generation Internet technology.
George Sadowsky, helped develop and deploy communications networks to more than 50 developing countries, also concentrating his work on applying computer networks to improve economic and social policy. He is a leader on the ICANN Board of Directors.
Henning Schulzrinne, co-developed the protocols that enable Voice over Internet Protocol and multimedia applications, including real-time streaming and real-time transport. He is CTO for the Federal Communications Commission.
Richard Stallman launched the Free Software Movement in 1983 by announcing the plan to develop the GNU operating system, intended to be composed entirely of freedom-respecting software. The GNU/Linux operating system is widely used today. Stallman preferred that his interview not be placed in any non-free software system, so it is available here (webm) or here (ogv). These videos are encoded using codecs that may not play on all browsers.
Stephen Wolff, as a leader with NSF, developed the NSFNET – the first open computer network in the U.S. for the support of research and higher education. He has also been a leader at Cisco and serves as VP and CTO of Internet2.
Additional top Internet leaders interviewed:
Ram Mohan is executive vice president and CTO at Afilias and a member of the board of ICANN. He is active in the Internet Society and is on the board of several technology start-up companies.
Scott Bradner is university technology security officer at Harvard University, secretary for the Internet Society and is well-known for his personal columns on technology for Network World. He is a longtime leader of IETF and ARIN, the North American Regional Internet Registry.
Eric Burger is a member of the ISOC Board of Trustees and director of the Georgetown Center for Secure Communications in Washington. He is the author of 17 IETF RFCs, and he has chaired numerous IETF work groups.
Raul Echeberria is a member of the ISOC Board of Trustees and executive director of LACNIC, the Regional Internet Registry for Latin America and the Caribbean. He has also served on the Multistakeholder Advisory Group for the Internet Governance Forum.
Rudi Vansnick, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Internet Society, is one of the founding members of the European At Large Organization within ICANN, and is active in a number of ALAC working groups.
Andrew Sullivan is a member of the Internet Architecture Board and a leader in IETF who serves as a DNS Extensions Working Group co-chair, among other roles. He serves as director of engineering for Dyn, a DNS services company.
Bert Wijnen is chair of the Network Configuration Working Group of IETF and is credited as an author on nearly 30 RFCs. He is a research engineer at the RIPE Network Coordination Center, one of five Regional Internet Registries.
James Galvin, is a network security engineer and director of strategic and technical standards at Afilias. He is a leader in IETF and is a member of the ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee. He is a principal in the design of secure protocols.
Ralph Droms, is a distinguished engineer at Cisco and leader in IETF. He primarily works in development of IPv6-capable routers and the protocol standards for Smart Grid.
Click here to view acceptance speeches from the Internet Society’s 2013 Hall of Fame Induction.
– IETF and Internet Hall of Fame 2013 video interviews were conducted by Jeff Ackermann, Katie Blunt, Ryan Greene, Shakori Fletcher and Alex Rose, researchers from Elon University’s School of Communications, under the supervision of Aaron Moger, University Communications video producer, Naeemah Clark, associate professor, and Janna Anderson, associate professor and director of the Imagining the Internet Center.
