Cerf also is a visiting scientist at Jet Propulsion Labs, where he's working on standards for space-based, interplanetary communication. He's involved in building a new protocol stack that allows for "lots of impairments; stuff moving, like planets and satellites," not to mention latency and bandwidth considerations. In fact, this new stack must work in a store-and-forward mode to account for all these characteristics. The goal is to create a standard set of protocols that can be used for all space missions. Two recent Mars missions have used the link layers of this stack, and by the end of the decade, if things go according to plan, the Mars Communication Orbiter will use the full interplanetary stack.
Cerf kills the rest of his time serving as chairman of the board for the politically charged ICANN, where he's led the way since 1999, promoting technology-training classes for developing countries and support for RFC editing, among other things near and dear to his heart.
Carl Malamud, Father of Internet Talk Radio
You're probably familiar with Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, but does the name Carl Malamud ring a bell? NBA referees might not want to thank the man who ushered in the age of Internet radio, which led to Cuban's founding the lucrative Broadcast.com. Malamud was the driving force behind some other truly amazing accomplishments as well.
This Fulbright-Hayes scholar, who was a Network Computing writer and a compelling industry speaker in the early '90s, was also authoring books, conducting seminars, and doing research and consulting for the Federal Reserve, the Department of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other government organizations.
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