An Interview with Vint Cerf and Taher Elgamal
On November 21 and 22, the Marconi Society is proud to host our inaugural Workshop on Internet resiliency. The forum will address current Internet fragility and points of failure, as well as outline opportunities and concrete ways to bolster resilience, especially in light of emerging and frontier technologies.
Leaders from industry, government, and academia will delve into the current state of Internet resiliency and what the term means, as well as detailed discussions around routing systems, subsea cables, and other key elements of resiliency.
Our workshop will kick off with a context-setting discussion on the history and future of the Internet with Vint Cerf, 1998 Marconi Fellow and Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google, along with Steve Crocker, CEO of Shinkuro. The opening panel, laying out the current state of Internet resiliency, areas of vulnerability, and key interdependencies, will be led by Taher Elgamal, 2019 Marconi Fellow and General Partner at Evolution Equity Partners.
Vint and Taher share a few thoughts with us in advance of this critical workshop.
How does the Marconi Society uniquely contribute to the global discussion about Internet resiliency?
Vint: The Marconi Society, by virtue of its scholars, Fellows and supporters, has access to some of the most creative minds on the planet. Among them are the originators of the Internet and subsequent founders of major innovations and organizations in various parts of the Internet ecosystem. Understanding resilience requires both depth of knowledge of the operational Internet and also a deep understanding of its architecture and points of dependency.
Taher: The Marconi Society uniquely specializes in building and maintaining all aspects of wireless communications and our Fellows and Young Scholars have intimate knowledge of all levels of these networks. From an Internet resiliency perspective, we need to build networks that are as resilient as the human race, since so much of our lives now take place digitally. The Marconi Society’s innovators and convening power as a trusted expert make us the perfect group to host these conversations.
What does Internet Resiliency mean to you?
Vint: A system at the scale of the Internet is always broken somewhere and, in spite of that, it has to keep working. Resiliency is about maintaining function in the face of various failures. It is often also about rapid recovery from failures, whether that is re-booting a router or activating a spare-orbit satellite or cross-connecting fibers to recover swiftly from a fiber cut.
Taher: Our global digital society is a key part of everyone’s lives. Right now, the characteristics of this digital society are not up to our standards because we are using the network in ways we never could have imagined when it was created. We owe it to the world to build an Internet that is as secure, trusted, and resilient as many aspects of our physical world.
What are your goals for the outcome of this initial workshop?
Vint: I hope for a much deeper understanding of what information needs to be where in order to re-boot the whole Internet. We need to know how that information is obtained and how it ends up in the right place for system recovery to be credible and swift.
Taher: Workshops need to produce specific results and actions. I hope that in this workshop we will create a general definition of what Internet resiliency means for us and for future generations, as well as key issues to resolve in routing and subsea cables, where we are doing a deep dive. This overall definition of resiliency will help us understand what we are trying to solve and guide us in asking the right questions.
