Videos: Net pioneers on smart grid, Web congestion

Cerf: make smart grid secure, flexible
SAN JOSE, Calif. — In separate keynote addresses in Silicon Valley, two Internet pioneers gave different takes on the future of the network of networks Monday (May 24).

Vint Cerf, co-developer of the Net's TCP/IP protocol, shared his thoughts with developers of the smart electric grid, seen as a massive embedded extension to the Internet. Larry Roberts, who helped launch the forerunner of the Internet, explained his ideas for remedying the growing congestion that plagues the Web today.

Smart grid developers can learn from the lessons of the Internet, Cerf told attendees at Connectivity Week here. They should follow the model of the Net in creating a layered architecture with plenty of room for flexibility in areas that cannot be anticipated today, he said in a keynote at Connectivity Week.

In a Q&A after the talk, Cerf was frank about the mistakes of Net pioneers such as himself in anticipating a 32-bit address space would be adequate for the Net, setting up today's difficult but necessary transition between IPv4 and IPv6. He also talked about the role of utilities and the complexity of building a fully networked power grid.

Cerf also made a strong pitch for more robust security in the next-generation Internet and grid, noting the inherent weakness of today's password system.

"One of things incumbent on all of us is to introduce strong authentication into the fabric of the smart grid," Cerf said. "We did not do that with the Internet.

"My excuse is public key cryptography not even publically written about until 1977 which is just about when TCP/IP was getting standardized, Cerf said."But today we don't want devices to respond to control from something that’s not authenticated," he added.

The grid has an opportunity to build in strong authentication techniques such as use of digital signatures. Getting such approaches widely adopted on the existing Internet will be a harder job, he suggested.