The Early Internet and Beyond

Abstract:
This presentation traces both the early history of the science and infrastructure that emerged as the ARPANET, as well as the trajectory of development it set for the even broader construct that we now call the Internet.The factors that motivated the appearance of these data networks along with the early technology that provided their underpinning will be described.
In this, I will offer a personal and autobiographical element. The Internet did not evolve automatically from earlier telecommunications, but rather emerged from a process traced to i) early research in packet switching and dynamic resource allocation, and ii) the institutional environment created with ARPA in the post-war US. This merging of the theoretical thread with the government thread will be traced.
I will then briefly follow the Internet trajectory from an engineering research experiment to the commercial Internet of today.

Bio:
Leonard Kleinrock is Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at UCLA. He is considered a father of the Internet, having developed the mathematical theory of packet networks, the technology that launched the Internet, as an MIT graduate student in 1962. His laboratory at UCLA became the first node of the Internet in September 1969 from which he directed the transmission of the first Internet message.
Leonard Kleinrock received the 2007 National Medal of Science, the highest honor for achievement in science bestowed by the President of the United States. He received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1963. He has served as Professor of Computer Science at UCLA since then, serving as department Chairman from 1991-1995. He received a BEE degree from CCNY in 1957 and an MS degree from MIT in 1959. He has published over 250 papers and authored six books in areas including packet switching networks, packet radio networks, local area networks, broadband networks, nomadic computing, performance evaluation, intelligent agents, peer-to-peer networks and advanced network design. He has supervised the research for over 50 Ph.D. students.
Dr. Kleinrock is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, is an IEEE fellow, an ACM fellow, a fellow of the Computer History Museum, an INFORMS fellow, an IEC fellow, an inaugural member of the Internet Hall of Fame, and a Guggenheim fellow. A few among his many honors are the recipient of the National Medal of Science, the Ericsson Prize, the NAE Draper Prize, the Marconi Prize, the Dan David Prize, the Okawa Prize, the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award, IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal, the IEEE Internet Millennium Award, the ORSA Lanchester Prize, the ACM SIGCOMM Award, and the NEC Computer and Communications Award,