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VintCerf Talk


October 08, 2004 —

Internet pioneer Vinton Cerf, one of the fathers of the Internet, will take a look at the phenomenal growth of this worldwide

 
Vinton Cerf
communications tool and its potential for delivering virtually any digital format in a special USC campus open house to be held Oct. 14 from 5 - 7:30 p.m.

Cerf’s talk — “The Internet: A New Fabric for the Support of Rich Media Distribution and Interaction” — will begin at 6 p.m. in the Gerontology Auditorium and highlight some of the new transmission media likely to be adapted to the Internet as the network expands.

“The Internet is capable of carrying virtually any digital content,” said Cerf, senior vice president of technology strategy at MCI. “As its capacity increases, new Internet transmission media, such as various forms of radio, satellite and cable broadcast, will emerge.  That will make the Internet one of the richest environments in which to produce, distribute and consume a wide variety of digital content.” 

He helped design the Internet’s basic protocol, called Internet Protocol (IP), to ensure that packets of data reached their destinations.  He wrote the blueprint for “Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol” (TCP/IP), along with his colleague Robert E. Kahn.  The USC Viterbi School's Information Sciences Institute also did much of this fundamental work.  TCP/IP defined the form in which Internet data packets would be sent and how they would reach their destinations.  TCP/IP was solely responsible for turning the U.S. Defense Department’s ARPANET into the Internet.

Faculty and students are welcome to attend the event, which begins at 5 p.m. with an open house in USC's Integrated Media Systems Center.  Guests are invited to watch technology demonstrations and talk with USC computer science and engineering faculty.
 
The event is being hosted by the Viterbi School of Engineering’s Integrated Media Systems Center, the Marshall School of Business's Entrepreneurship Program and Center for Technology Commercialization, and Hispanic Net.  


For more information, contact Isaac Maya, director of IMSC’s Industry and Technology Transfer Programs, by email at imaya@imsc.usc.edu.