Telephone Interview with Dr.

Lawrence Roberts 12 May 2013 Transcription Interviewers: Sarah Vicol and Calvin Lu

Dr. Lawrence Roberts is considered one of the four fathers of the Internet. He majored in electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earning his bachelors degree, masters degree, and Ph.D. in 1959, 1960, and 1963, respectively. In 1961, Roberts read Dr. J. C. R. Lickliders paper entitled the Intergalactic Computer Network, which gave Roberts the idea of a computer network that relied on data packets for communication. In 1966, Dr. Roberts was hired by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) as program manager of the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO). It was the IPTO that funded the development of the packetswitching technology and computer network that Dr. Roberts had designed, and under his leadership, the computer network, dubbed ARPANET, was successfully completed in 1969. That same year, Dr. Roberts became the director of IPTO, a position he held until he left ARPA in 1973 to being his own company, Telenet, the first packetswitch utility company. Since then, Dr. Roberts has served in executive positions at DHL Corporation, NetExpress, ATM Systems, and Caspian Networks. In 2011, he founded the IP flow management company Anagran Inc., which he is chairman of, and as of September 2012, Dr. Roberts is CEO of Netmax Communications.

Q: What do you think Sputniks long-term impact on the world is? A: Sputnik made the United States concerned about satellites, so it immediately or [...] started the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), which is now DARPA, and it gave it the charter to develop new technologies that werent particularly being pursued by DoD [Department of Defense] agencies. It changed the world and the planet considerably. It immediately started the space program and turned it over to NASA somewhat later. As a result of starting our program and its many divisions, one of which is Information Processing, which took over my team in 67 to work on the network. As a direct result of Sputnik, the United States realized that it had to work on new technologies. Besides space, it started work on information technology, which is where the Internet came from. Q: Was ARPA created as a reaction to the launch of Sputnik I? A: Yes, totally. Q: What was the atmosphere at ARPA in its first few years of operation? A: No, I wasnt there in the first few years. Dr. Licklider was there; hes dead, so I dont know how to point you at anybody.

Q: How did the idea of ARPANET come about? A: Dr. Licklider, the first director of Information Technology Processing, had a conversation with me at a conference where he pointed out that one of the great things that needed to happen was to build a network to connect computers together. He thought that was important; he was a behavioral scientist, so he was not able to talk about doing it, but he was interested in it happening. He passed that on to his successor Ivan Sutherland at ARPA, and Ivan tried to recruit me for that when he was leaving the office. In the meantime, Ivan funded me to work on the network technology because I was particularly interested after talking to Licklider. So I did an experiment which was funded by ARPA and then, later, after Ivan left, his deputy continued pushing me to come, and I came in 66; I moved to ARPA to start the network. Q: Do you think that the launch of Sputnik I sped up the worlds entrance into the Information Age? A: Well, in a sense, yes. ARPA was trying to do a number of things, one of which was the space program, which was turned over to NASA, and many other strategic technologies. But by starting information processing and letting it grow to create the next information technology areas of critical importance, it did change the Information Age considerably. Even what Licklider did, which was to fund all universities in computer sciencethat pushed the number of engineers up that were involved with computer science so that there was a lot more activity in the whole industry a lot more people available later which is a critical part as well, as well as designing a network which is what I did in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. The network I got built by 69. Q: Do you think the goals of ARPA are the same now as when the agency was first created? A: Well, no; its been affected by Congress quite a bit in the period around 1975 and later, when in fact Congress mandated that ARPA not pursue the basic research anymore, just work on development, which changed its focus to not funding the universities basically in computer science, but just funding projects in information technology that appeared to have more near-time potential than just basic research. It also had a lot of different people come in over the years, and today, its actually a very strong agency in terms of funding and starting new technologies, but theyre very specific to what they think is important. Q: In your opinion, what was the most important event that contributed to Americas success in the Space Race? A: Sputnik caused ARPA to be created and start building the boosters and rocket technology which then passed over to NASA, so basically, Sputnik started our space program. Q: What are your comments about the magnitude of the launch of Sputnik I and its overall impact on the world we live in today? A: It sped up the United States involvement in creating advanced technology through ARPA. That has a great impact in many, many areas by now, but probably the biggest was the creation of the

Internet. But thereve been a tremendous number of other things that it has developed over the years, including much faster computers, parallel processing, and lots of other information technologies, as well as lots of other military technologies. Q: Is there anything else you would like to say on the topic? A: The whole concept of how the Internet got started has been rather confused because of the number of different people involved. The basic program to build a network and develop packet switching, which is the underlying technology, is what I started in 69 with the network. I worked with information from Len Kleinrock, who had written a book about queuing theory and networks where I learned that I could buffer everything and it would work. Most people thought I was crazy, that I couldnt build a network like thatthat is, most of the people at AT&T and the military communications agency. I had to fight people saying that it wouldnt work, but of course it is working dramatically better than circuit switching, which is the alternative. So, all of the communications today pretty much is in packet switching. I would say that I was the founder of the technology, Len was the inventor, in a sense, and Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf did the next protocol and turned the program forward.