Networking

Bob Kahn & Vinton Cerf

[pic]Robert Kahn, along with Vinton Cerf, is a co-designer of the TCP/IP Internet network protocol. Kahn set the open architecture groundwork for the TCP/IP protocol, supplying the Internet with one of its most distinguishing features and what has turned out to be an important advantage. Together, Kahn and Cerf wrote their now-famous paper, "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication." The two produced what became the interlanguage of the Net -- TCP/IP -- which has been used to send information over the Internet ever since.

Native New Yorker Robert Kahn's climb to spectacular internet trailblazer was not predestined. He made it happen. Born during the closing years of America's Great Depression, Kahn's family moved from their Brooklyn neighborhood to Flushing, Queens around 1953, when he was approximately thirteen. Like many of the innovators of the computer industry, Kahn was a gifted child, finishing his high school's accelerated program in three years, advancing to college at a young age.

After high school, Kahn entered Queens College and remained there for two years before changing to City College, where he completed a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering two years later. Kahn views his undergraduate study at City College as period where he began to seriously consider his career. He didn't like chemical lab work but always enjoyed mathematics. In January 1960, he graduated and went to work for Bell Labs when their offices were in Manhattan. Later that year, Kahn received an honored fellowship from the National Science Foundation, and in September found himself in graduate school at Princeton University.

Upon completing graduate school in 1964, Kahn contacted Peter Elias, the chairman of MIT's engineering department and he was invited to join the faculty in the fall. Eventually, Kahn determined his work at MIT to be a little stifling, and went to work at BBN Labs, turning his attention towards computer networking....