Larry Roberts (December 21, 1937 – December 26, 2018) was an American computer scientist and Internet pioneer.
Quick Facts Lawrence Roberts, Born ...
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As a program manager and later office director at the Advanced Research Projects Agency, Roberts and his team created the ARPANET using packet switching techniques invented by British computer scientist Donald Davies and American engineer Paul Baran.[4][5] The ARPANET's principal designer was Bob Kahn who worked at Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN). Roberts asked Leonard Kleinrock to apply mathematical methods to model and measure the performance of the network. Subsequent ARPA research on communication protocols for internetworking led to the development of the modern Internet.
Roberts later was CEO of the commercial packet-switching network Telenet, the first public data network in North America.
Lawrence Gilman Roberts, who was known as Larry, was born and raised in Westport, Connecticut.[6] He was the son of Elizabeth (Gilman) and Elliott John Roberts, both of whom had doctorates in chemistry. It is said that during his youth, he built a Tesla coil, assembled a television, and designed a telephone network built from transistors for his parents' Girl Scout camp.[7]
Roberts attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he received his bachelor's degree (1959), master's degree (1960), and Ph.D. (1963),[8] all in electrical engineering.[7] Due to his Ph.D. thesis "Machine Perception of Three-Dimensional Solids"[8] he is known as the father of computer vision.[9][10]
ARPA
In 1967, although at first reluctant, he was recruited by Robert Taylor in the ARPA Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) to become the program manager for the ARPANET. Roberts met Paul Baran in February 1967, but did not discuss networks.[12][13] He asked Frank Westervelt to explore the initial design questions for a network.[14] Roberts prepared a proposal that all host computers would connect to one another directly.[15] Taylor and Wesley Clark disagreed with this design and Clark suggested the use of dedicated computers to create a message switching network, which were later called Interface Message Processors.[14][16]
At the Symposium on Operating System Principles (SOSP) that year, Roberts presented the plan based on Clark's message switching proposal.[17][18][19] There he met a member of Donald Davies's team (Roger Scantlebury) who presented their research on packet switching and suggested it for use in the ARPANET.[20][21] Roberts applied Davies's concepts of packet switching for the ARPANET, and sought input from Paul Baran.[22][23][24][25]
Roberts' plan for the ARPANET was the first wide area packet-switching network with distributed control, similar to Donald Davies' 1965 design.[26] ARPA issued a request for quotation (RFQ) to build the system, which was awarded to Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN). Significant aspects of the network's operation including routing, flow control, software design and network control were developed by the BBN IMP team, which included Bob Kahn. Roberts managed its implementation and contracted with Leonard Kleinrock in 1968 to carry out mathematical modelling of the packet-switched network's performance.[27] Roberts engaged Howard Frank to consult on the topological design of the network. Frank made recommendations to increase throughput and reduce costs in a scaled-up network.[28] When Robert Taylor was sent to Vietnam in 1969 and then resigned, Roberts became director of the IPTO.
Roberts became a champion of packet switching.[29] In 1970, he proposed to NPL's Donald Davies that the two organizations connect their networks via a satellite link. This original proposal proved infeasible, but in 1971 Peter Kirstein agreed to Roberts' proposal to connect his research group at University College London (UCL) instead. UCL provided interconnection with British academic networks, forming the first international resource sharing network.[30] Roberts anticipated in 1973 that it would be possible to use a satellite's 64 kilobit/second link as a medium shared by multiple satellite earth stations within the beam's footprint. This was implemented later by Bob Kahn, and resulted in SATNET.
The Purdy Polynomial hash algorithm was developed for the ARPANET to protect passwords in 1971 at the request of Roberts.
Roberts approached AT&T in the early 1970s about taking over the ARPANET to offer a public packet switched service but they declined.[31]
In early 1973, Roberts predicted the network would run out of capacity in nine months. In practice, it was found that the time-sharing host computers ran out of capacity before the network did.[32]
Telenet
In 1973, Roberts left ARPA to join BBN's effort to commercialize the nascent packet-switching technology in the form of Telenet,[33] the first FCC-licensed public data network in the United States. He was its CEO from 1973 to 1980. Roberts joined the international effort to standardize a protocol for packet switching based on virtual circuits shortly before it was finalized.[34][35] Telenet converted to the X.25 protocol, which was adopted by PTTs across North America and Europe for public data networks in the mid-late 1970s.[36] Roberts promoted this approach over the datagram approach in TCP/IP being pursued by ARPA, which he described as "oversold" in 1978.
Later career
In 1983 he joined DHL Corporation as President. At the time, he predicted bandwidths would go down driven by voice compression technology.[37]
He was CEO of NetExpress, an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) equipment company, from 1983 to 1993. Roberts was president of ATM Systems from 1993 to 1998. He was chairman and CTO of Caspian Networks, but left in early 2004; Caspian ceased operation in late 2006.[38]
As of 2011[update], Roberts was the founder and chairman of Anagran Inc. Anagran continues work in the same area as Caspian: IP flow management with improved quality of service for the Internet.[39]
Since September 2012, he was CEO of Netmax in Redwood City, California.[40]
Roberts claimed in later years that, by the time of the October 1967 SOSP, he already had the concept of packet switching in mind (although not yet named and not written down in his paper published at the conference, which a number of sources describe as "vague").[41][42][43][44][45] Furthermore, he claimed that his experiment with Thomas Marill in October 1965,[46] was based on packet switching;[47][48][49] and that their subsequent paper, Towards a Cooperative Network of Time-Shared Computers, published the following year, was a blueprint for the ARPANET.[50][51][52] In addition, he began describing himself as having been the "Chief Scientist" at APRA.[53][54][55] These claims have been reflected in publications about the history of the ARPANET and the Internet, and became part of the packet switching 'paternity dispute'.[56]
Roberts originally viewed his role at ARPA as "largely administrative".[57] His early work, prior to SOSP, has been described as "extend[ing] the concept of a support graphics processor to the idea of a network" using "existing telegraphic techniques".[58][59] Primary sources and historians recognize Baran and Davies for independently inventing the concept of digital packet switching used in modern computer networking including the ARPANET and the Internet.[60][61][62][63][64]
Roberts married and divorced four times. At the time of his death, his partner was physician Tedde Rinker.[6] Roberts died at his California home from a heart attack on December 26, 2018.[6][65]
- IEEE Harry H. Goode Memorial Award (1976 ), "In recognition of his contributions to the architectural design of computer-communication systems, his leadership in creating a fertile research environment leading to advances in computer and satellite communications techniques, his role in the establishment of standard international communication protocols and procedures, and his accomplishments in development and demonstration of packet switching technology and the ensuing networks which grew out of this work."[66]
- Member, National Academy of Engineering (1978)[67]
- L.M. Ericsson Prize (1982) in Sweden[67]
- Computer Design Hall of Fame Award (1982)[67]
- IEEE W. Wallace McDowell Award (1990), "For architecting packet switching technology and bringing it into practical use by means of the ARPA network."[67][68]
- Association for Computing Machinery SIGCOMM Award (1998), for "visionary contributions and advanced technology development of computer communication networks".[67][69]
- IEEE Internet Award (2000) For "early, preeminent contributions in conceiving, analyzing and demonstrating packet-switching networks, the foundation technology of the Internet."[67][70]
- International Engineering Consortium Fellow Award (2001)[67]
- National Academy of Engineering Charles Stark Draper Prize (2001), "for the development of the Internet" [71][72]
- Principe de Asturias Award 2002 in Spain "for designing and implementing a system that is changing the world by providing previously unthought of opportunities for social and scientific progress."[73]
- NEC C&C Award (2005) in Japan "For Contributions to Establishing the Foundation of Today's Internet Technology through ... the Design and Development of ARPANET and Other Early Computer Networks that were Part of the Initial Internet."[74]
- In 2012, Roberts was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame by the Internet Society.[75]
Abbate, Jane (1999). Inventing the Internet. MIT Press. p. 3. ISBN 978-0262261333. The manager of the ARPANET project, Lawrence Roberts, assembled a large team of computer scientists ... and he drew on the ideas of network experimenters in the United States and the United Kingdom.
"A Flaw In The Design". The Washington Post. May 30, 2015. Historians credit seminal insights to Welsh scientist Donald W. Davies and American engineer Paul Baran
Waldrop, M. Mitchell (2018). The Dream Machine. Stripe Press. pp. 285–6. ISBN 978-1-953953-36-0. Oops. Roberts knew Baran slightly and had in fact had lunch with him during a visit to RAND the previous February. But he certainly didn't remember any discussion of networks. How could he have missed something like that?
O'Neill, Judy (March 5, 1990). "An Interview with PAUL BARAN" (PDF). p. 37. On Tuesday, 28 February 1967 I find a notation on my calendar for 12:00 noon Dr. L. Roberts.
Press, Gil (January 2, 2015). "A Very Short History Of The Internet And The Web". Forbes. Archived from the original on January 9, 2015. Retrieved February 7, 2020. Roberts' proposal that all host computers would connect to one another directly ... was not endorsed ... Wesley Clark ... suggested to Roberts that the network be managed by identical small computers, each attached to a host computer. Accepting the idea, Roberts named the small computers dedicated to network administration 'Interface Message Processors' (IMPs), which later evolved into today's routers.
Naughton, John (2015). A Brief History of the Future: The origins of the Internet. Hachette. ISBN 978-1474602778. they lacked one vital ingredient. Since none of them had heard of Paul Baran they had no serious idea of how to make the system work. And it took an English outfit to tell them. ... Larry Roberts paper was the first public presentation of the ARPANET concept as conceived with the aid of Wesley Clark ... Looking at it now, Roberts paper seems extraordinarily, well, vague.
Tanenbaum, Andrew S.; Wetherall, David (2011). Computer networks (PDF) (5th ed.). Boston Amsterdam: Prentice Hall. p. 57. ISBN 978-0-13-212695-3. Roberts bought the idea and presented a some what vague paper about it at the ACM SIGOPS Symposium on Operating System Principles held in Gatlinburg, Tennessee in late 1967
Hafner, Katie; Lyon, Matthew (1996). Where wizards stay up late: the origins of the Internet. Internet Archive. Simon & Schuster. pp. 76–78. ISBN 978-0-684-81201-4. Roger Scantlebury ... from Donald Davies' team ... presented a detailed design study for a packet switched network. It was the first Roberts had heard of it. ... Roberts also learned from Scantlebury, for the first time, of the work that had been done by Paul Baran at RAND a few years earlier.
Abbate, Jane (2000). Inventing the Internet. MIT Press. pp. 37–8, 58–9. ISBN 978-0262261333. The NPL group influenced a number of American computer scientists in favor of the new technique, and they adopted Davies's term "packet switching" to refer to this type of network. Roberts also adopted some specific aspects of the NPL design.
Roberts 1978 "In nearly all respects, Davies’ original proposal, developed in late 1965, was similar to the actual networks being built today." Heart, F.; McKenzie, A.; McQuillian, J.; Walden, D. (January 4, 1978). Arpanet Completion Report (PDF) (Technical report). Burlington, MA: Bolt, Beranek and Newman. Enterprise, I. D. G. (March 14, 1983). Computerworld. IDG Enterprise. p. 71. Naughton, John (2015). A Brief History of the Future: The origins of the Internet. Hachette. ISBN 978-1474602778. they lacked one vital ingredient. Since none of them had heard of Paul Baran they had no serious idea of how to make the system work. And it took an English outfit to tell them. ... Larry Roberts paper was the first public presentation of the ARPANET concept as conceived with the aid of Wesley Clark ... Looking at it now, Roberts paper seems extraordinarily, well, vague.
Tanenbaum, Andrew S.; Wetherall, David (2011). Computer networks (PDF) (5th ed.). Boston Amsterdam: Prentice Hall. p. 57. ISBN 978-0-13-212695-3. Roberts bought the idea and presented a some what vague paper about it at the ACM SIGOPS Symposium on Operating System Principles held in Gatlinburg, Tennessee in late 1967
Kirstein, Peter T. (2009). "The early history of packet switching in the UK". IEEE Communications Magazine. 47 (2): 18–26. doi:10.1109/MCOM.2009.4785372. S2CID 34735326. It is more difficult to establish at this time, however, whether Larry intended to switch the fragments as independent packets in the ARPAnet before he heard of the NPL work; certainly he now claims that this was always his intention.
technicshistory (June 2, 2019). "ARPANET, Part 2: The Packet". Creatures of Thought. Retrieved June 21, 2024. The above description of how packet-switching came to be is the most widely-accepted one. However, there is an alternative version. Roberts claimed in later years that by the time of the Gatlinburg symposium, he already had the basic concepts of packet-switching well in mind, and that they originated with his old colleague Len Kleinrock, who had written about them as early as 1962, as part of his Ph.D. research on communication nets. It requires a great deal of squinting to extract anything resembling packet-switching from Kleinrock's work, however, and no other contemporary textual evidence that I have come across backs the Kleinrock/Roberts account.
Katie Hafner (November 8, 2001), "A Paternity Dispute Divides Net Pioneers", New York Times, The Internet is really the work of a thousand people," Mr. Baran said. "And of all the stories about what different people have done, all the pieces fit together. It's just this one little case that seems to be an aberration.
Hafner, Katie (December 30, 2018). "Lawrence Roberts, Who Helped Design Internet's Precursor, Dies at 81". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved February 20, 2020. He decided to use packet switching as the underlying technology of the Arpanet; it remains central to the function of the internet. And it was Dr. Roberts's decision to build a network that distributed control of the network across multiple computers. Distributed networking remains another foundation of today's internet.
Barber, Derek (Spring 1993). "The Origins of Packet Switching". The Bulletin of the Computer Conservation Society (5). ISSN 0958-7403. Retrieved September 6, 2017. Larry Roberts had extended the concept of a support graphics processor to the idea of a network, and he was then talking about multiple computer networks and inter-computer communication. Roger actually convinced Larry that what he was talking about was all wrong and that the way that NPL were proposing to do it was right. I've got some notes that say that first Larry was sceptical but several of the others there sided with Roger and eventually Larry was overwhelmed by the numbers. That actually gave birth to Arpanet
"Oral-History:Donald Davies & Derek Barber". Retrieved April 13, 2016. the ARPA network is being implemented using existing telegraphic techniques simply because the type of network we describe does not exist. It appears that the ideas in the NPL paper at this moment are more advanced than any proposed in the USA
Abbate, Jane (2000). Inventing the Internet. MIT Press. pp. 37–8, 58–9. ISBN 978-0262261333. The NPL group influenced a number of American computer scientists in favor of the new technique, and they adopted Davies's term "packet switching" to refer to this type of network. Roberts also adopted some specific aspects of the NPL design.
Norberg, Arthur L.; O'Neill, Judy E. (1996). Transforming computer technology: information processing for the Pentagon, 1962-1986. Johns Hopkins studies in the history of technology New series. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press. pp. 153–196. ISBN 978-0-8018-5152-0. Prominently cites Baran and Davies as sources of inspiration, and nowhere mentions Kleinrock's work. A History of the ARPANET: The First Decade (PDF) (Report). Bolt, Beranek & Newman Inc. April 1, 1981. pp. 13, 53 of 183. Archived from the original on December 1, 2012. Aside from the technical problems of interconnecting computers with communications circuits, the notion of computer networks had been considered in a number of places from a theoretical point of view. Of particular note was work done by Paul Baran and others at the Rand Corporation in a study "On Distributed Communications" in the early 1960's. Also of note was work done by Donald Davies and others at the National Physical Laboratory in England in the mid-1960's. ... Another early major network development which affected development of the ARPANET was undertaken at the National Physical Laboratory in Middlesex, England, under the leadership of D. W. Davies.
"The Internet is one of the most eloquent examples of the benefits that accrue from scientific research and a commitment to technological innovation. A myriad of people and institutions were involved in this work. The jury wishes to acknowledge them all in awarding the prize to the four leaders of so extraordinary a development."José Luis Álvarez Margaride; Ernesto Carmona Guzmán; et al. (May 23, 2002). "Minutes of the Jury – Technical and Scientific Research 2002". Fundación Príncipe de Asturias. Archived from the original on November 21, 2008. Retrieved April 10, 2008. "The great success and popularity of the Internet are due to the efforts of a great many people, but it was the three members of Group B who truly created the technological foundation for its success ... Dr. Roberts, at ARPA, was responsible for creating the first computer network, the ARPANET, and for its architecture and overall management." "Foundation for C&C Promotion Announces Recipients of 2005 C&C Prize – Mr. Kei-ichi Enoki, Mr. Takeshi Natsuno, Ms. Mari Matsunaga, Dr. Robert E. Kahn, Dr. Lawrence G. Roberts, & Professor Leonard Kleinrock". NEC. November 17, 2005.
- Larry Roberts, "The ARPANET and Computer Networks", Computer History Museum, 1986
- Personal website
- Oral history interview with Lawrence G. Roberts. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. Roberts directed the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) during 1968–1973 and was later chief operating officer of Network Express. The interview focuses on IPTO and the Advanced Research Projects Agency. Much of Roberts's description of the work of ARPA and IPTO is set within the context of his interactions with Congress on budget matters. Topics include J. C. R. Licklider, Ivan Sutherland, Stephen J. Lukasik, Wesley Clark, ARPA and IPTO support of research in computer science, computer networks, and artificial intelligence, the ARPANET, the involvement of universities with ARPA and IPTO.
- Oral history interview with Robert E. Kahn. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. Kahn discusses the work of various DARPA and IPTO personnel including J. C. R. Licklider, Vinton Cerf, and Larry Roberts
- Lawrence G. Roberts's Archived June 18, 2011, at the Wayback Machine profile on Internet Evolution Archived March 29, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, "the macrosite for news, analysis, & opinion about the future of the internet."
- "Obituary: Lawrence Roberts, Who Helped Design Internet’s Precursor, Dies at 81", Katie Hafner, New York Times, December 30, 2018.
