cerf's up

My mind wandered this morning as I made a too-early trip up the Baltimore-Washington parkway to catch my flight home. Vint Cerf snapped me out of it as he rolled by in an XJ with the vanity tag 'CERFS UP'.

Cerf's Up.
Photo Courtesy Your Correspondent

He peeled off for NSA after just a few moments and I was alone again with a new, single thought. I hope Bob Kahn has a better ride.

Though not clear in the photo, the Jag is moving under its own power. That's something.

Cerf's choice is not actually a bad one for one of the Internet's two dads. In Jaguar-speke, this car is an XJ8 with the internal code name X308. This car is derived from the Jaguar XJ40, introduced to the public as a new XJ6 in 1986.

Jaguar started sketching the XJ40 in the early Seventies. Wikipedia reports that small models were built as early as 1972. Professor Cerf banged out TCP/IP with Bob Kahn at Stanford during the same time. The XJ40 and TCP/IP are twins separated at birth. XJ40-derived were developed by Jaguar through 2002. IPv4 development plateaued at just about the same time. Uncanny.

IPv6 development began in earnest just as Ford was digesting Jaguar. It took both teams a long time to get new products to market. For Jaguar, the first new product under Ford was the S-Type in 1999. Geoff Lawson styled this car in 1995 and development continued just as Pedro Roque contributed the first IPv6 code to the Linux kernel.

At this point, Jaguar and IP diverge. The S-Type was smaller than earlier Jaguars and went on to be only a modest disappointment.

I have a guess what Cerf's next ride might be. It offers plenty of room for future expansion and is completely compatible* with existing (road) networks. Cerf's patrons at Google will be happy to know that a self-drive model is in the works.

A suitable new ride for Vint Cerf
*channel bonding required
Photo linked shamelessly from www.go2cats.com