Robert E. Kahn, (born December 23, 1938), along with Vinton G. Cerf, invented the TCP/IP protocol, the technology used to transmit information on the modern Internet. December 23 is the 357th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (358th in leap years). ... 1938 (MCMXXXVIII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... Vinton G. Cerf (born June 23, 1943) is commonly referred to as the father of the Internet. During his tenure from 1976 to 1982 with the United States Department of Defenses Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Cerf played a key role leading the development of Internet and Internet-related... The Internet protocol suite is the set of communications protocols that implement the protocol stack on which the Internet runs. ...

Image File history File links Kahn-1972. ...

Early career

He received a B.E.E. from the City College of New York in 1960, and an M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton University in 1962 and 1964 respectively. He worked for a while at Bell Laboratories, and as an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT. He took a leave of absence from MIT to join Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN), where he was responsible for the detailed overall design of the ARPANET, the first packet-switched network. The City College of The City University of New York (known more commonly as City College of New York or simply City College, CCNY, or colloquially as City) is a senior college of the City University of New York, in New York City. ... 1960 (MCMLX) was a leap year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1960 calendar). ... Princeton University is a coeducational private university located on an extensive campus mostly in the Borough of Princeton and partly in the Princeton Township in New Jersey, United States. ... 1962 (MCMLXII) was a common year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1962 calendar). ... 1964 (MCMLXIV) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1964 calendar). ... Bell Telephone Laboratories or Bell Labs was originally the research and development arm of the United States Bell System, and was the premier corporate facility of its type, developing a range of revolutionary technologies from telephone switches to specialized coverings for telephone cables, to the transistor. ... Mapúa Institute of Technology (MIT, MapúaTech or simply Mapúa) is a private, non-sectarian, Filipino tertiary institute located in Intramuros, Manila. ... BBN Technologies (originally Bolt Beranek and Newman) is a high technology company that provides research and development services. ... ARPANET logical map, March 1977. ... In computer networking and telecommunications, packet switching is the now-dominant communications paradigm, in which packets (units of information carriage) are individually routed between nodes over data links which might be shared by many other nodes. ...

In 1972 he moved to DARPA, and in October of that year, he demonstrated the ARPANET by connecting 40 different computers at the International Computer Communication Conference, publicizing the network to the general public for the first time. After he became Director of DARPA's Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO), he started the United States government's billion dollar Strategic Computing Program, the largest computer research and development program ever undertaken by the federal government. 1972 (MCMLXXII) was a leap year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1972 calendar). ... The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technology for use by the military. ... ARPANET logical map, March 1977. ...

The Internet

While working on a satellite packet network project, he came up with the initial ideas for what later became the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), which was intended as a replacement for an earlier network protocol, NCP, used in the ARPANET. While working on this, he played a major role in forming the basis of open-architecture networking, which would allow computers and networks all over the world to communicate with each other, regardless of what hardware or software the computers on each network used. To reach this goal, TCP was designed to have the following features: A packet is the fundamental unit of information carriage in all modern computer networks that use packet switching. ... The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is one of the core protocols of the Internet protocol suite. ... The Network Control Program (sometimes the abbreviation NCP is mistakenly expanded to Network Control Protocol, but this term is not found in the contemporary documentation) was the original protocol suite of the ARPANET. In NCP, the physical layer, the data link layer, and the network layer were all specified by...

• Small sub-sections of the whole network would be able to talk to each other through a specialized computer that only forwarded packets (first called a gateway, and now called a router).
• No portion of the network would be the single point of failure, or would be able to control the whole network.
• Each piece of information sent through the network would be a given a sequence number, to ensure that they were dealt with in the right order at the destination computer, and to detect the loss of any of them.
• A computer which sent information to another computer would know that it was successfully received when the destination computer sent back a special packet, called an acknowledgement, for that particular piece of information.
• If information sent from one computer to another was lost, the information would be retransmitted, after the loss was detected by a timeout, which would recognize that the expected acknowledgement had not been received.
• Each piece of information sent through the network would be accompanied by a checksum, calculated by the original sender, and checked by the ultimate receiver, to ensure that it was not damaged in any way en route.

Vint Cerf joined him on the project in the spring of 1973, and together they completed an early version of TCP. Later, it was separated into two separate layers, with the more basic functions being moved to the Internet Protocol (IP). The two together are usually referred together as TCP/IP, and are the basis for the modern Internet. A D-Link Wi-Fi NAT router, popular for home and small office networks A router is a computer networking device that forwards data packets across an internetwork toward their destinations, through a process known as routing. ... A checksum is a form of redundancy check, a very simple measure for protecting the integrity of data by detecting errors in data that is sent through space (telecommunications) or time (storage). ... Dr. Vinton Cerf Vinton Gray Cerf (born June 23, 1943) is an American computer scientist who is commonly referred to as one of the founding fathers of the Internet for his key technical and managerial role in the creation of the Internet and the TCP/IP protocols which it uses. ... 1973 (MCMLXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday. ... The Internet Protocol (IP) is a data-oriented protocol used for communicating data across a packet-switched internetwork. ...

Recent career

After thirteen years with DARPA, he left to found the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI) in 1986, and as of 2006 is the Chairman, CEO and President. CNRI is a not-for-profit organization which is intended to provide leadership and funding for research and development of the National Information Infrastructure. The Corporation For National Research Initiatives is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1986 by Robert E. Kahn. ... 1986 (MCMLXXXVI) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 2006 (MMVI) is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

He was award the SIGCOMM Award in 1993 for "for visionary technical contributions and leadership in the development of information systems technology", and shared the 2004 Turing Award with Vint Cerf, for "pioneering work on internetworking, including .. the Internet's basic communications protocols .. and for inspired leadership in networking." The SIGCOMM Award recognizes lifetime contribution to the field of communication networks. ... 1993 (MCMXCIII) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar and marked the Beginning of the International Decade to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination (1993-2003). ... It has been suggested that Information system be merged into this article or section. ... 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The A.M. Turing Award is given annually by the Association for Computing Machinery to a person selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community. ... Internetworking involves connecting two or more distinct computer networks together into an internetwork (often shortened to internet), using devices called routers to connect them together, to allow traffic to flow back and forth between them. ... In the field of telecommunications, a communications protocol is the set of standard rules for data representation, signalling, authentication, and error detection required to send information over a communications channel. ...

He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom on November 9, 2005 ^[1]. The Presidential Medal of Freedom The Presidential Medal of Freedom is one of the two highest civilian awards in the United States, considered the equivalent of the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor. ...

Notes

↑  2005 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients.

External links

• Biography of Robert E. Kahn on the Corporation for National Research Initiatives' website.
• Bio of Robert E. Kahn from the Living Internet.
• "Morning Edition" interview (NPR)
• "Nerd TV" interview (with Robert X. Cringley) - Requires QuickTime
• Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing, documentary ca. 1972 about the ARPANET. Includes footage of Robert E. Kahn.