In late 1972 Kahn moved to DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (essentially ARPA, renamed) and there he and Vint Cerf created the TCP/IP protocol that enables different computer networks (and computers connected to them) to “interwork,” regardless of their specific hardware or software configurations. In essence, the two men laid the technical foundation for email and file transfers, not to mention the World Wide Web and the various social networks that enthrall us today. While at DARPA, Kahn established the U.S. Department of Defense Strategic Computing Initiative, a 10-year, $1 billion-dollar project to create high-performance computing capabilities and selected applications, as well as to grow the Internet infrastructure within the DARPA research community. In the mid-1980s, he coined the term “National Information Infrastructure,” which later became more widely known as the “Information Superhighway.” For his work, Kahn has received a score of prestigious awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005, and in 2006, he was inducted into the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame.
But Kahn isn’t ready to rest on his laurels just yet. In 1986, after 13 years at DARPA, he founded the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), a Reston-based non-profit organization that promotes collaborative activities in information technology among government agencies, universities and private organizations. With CNRI, Kahn hopes to foster research and development for the national information infrastructure.
What made ARPANET so integral to the development of the Internet?
It was the first real computer network. It demonstrated a technology called packet switching, which was far more efficient for computer communication than circuit switching that was the standard at that time. It had many properties that were essential to computer communications. It was really a statement about both the future of communications as well as the future of computers.
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