Paul Mockapetris is the man credited with creating the Domain Name System (DNS) that is now an essential part of just about every computer system.
DNS began as a technology for locating servers on the internet. Since then it has been enhanced and is now a vital part of Microsoft's Active Directory. Linux servers will run at a snail's pace if the DNS fails, and desktop PCs are now so reliant on DNS that they are likely to crash if their DNS software is faulty.
It is no exaggeration to say that through his work on DNS, Mockapetris has affected all of us.
When he looks back at the key developments of the past five years he homes in on technologies that have fundamentally changed the way we do things or even think about things.
"Sometimes the impact that a technology has is far greater in an indirect sense than its direct effects," he says. "For example, the 802.11 wireless LAN specifications are great technology in themselves, but their unlicensed availability and low price has led to a burst in experimental activity for last-mile replacement [for land lines] and sensor nets."
Mockapetris explains that sensors are miniature computer systems equipped with a wireless LAN link and peer-to-peer software, and look set to play a significant role as miniature robots over the coming years. The peer-to-peer software and wireless LAN capabilities mean these devices can identify and communicate with each other automatically, and can form ad-hoc computer grids that can, as they say, go boldly where no man has gone before.
Mockapetris is upbeat about grid computing, though he views distributed denial-of-service attacks as the dark side of this approach.
"I think that we have tried over and over in the past 30 years to do distributed computing, and we may finally get it down over the next five," he adds. "What I'm thinking of is a model that is at the base level built out of peer-to-peer elements that communicate using DNS names or the like for unique identifiers."
As an example, he cites Gillette's deployment of a system of radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags for all its products. Each of the 500 million razorblade RFID tags for Gillette will have a discrete processor and a domain name.
Mockapetris says that advances in technology such as RFID tags, Wi-Fi and ultra-wideband, plus the progress of Moore's law, mean that there are potentially billions of machines to organise.
"I think of a car that replaces its worn parts on an ongoing basis, and that tells me, rather than the mechanic, what ails it. Another cool application is the dusting robot - robots that tidy up my house when I go to bed, based on information from RFID tags in my belongings."
RFIDs may not be vital for finding socks, but the Gillette project shows they will not only be used to keep track of expensive items, but will also be used with consumables.
Mockapetris believes that security is another area where we will see breakthroughs. "There's no technology I can point to, but rather the fact that the need will motivate solutions," he says. "For too long we have trusted security experts to create solutions, which have often been too expensive and too [mathematically] perfect to succeed. Security folk rarely think of usability. I think that has to change or we can kiss progress goodbye."
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ABOUT MOCKAPETRIS
Paul Mockapetris invented the Domain Name System (DNS) and contributed to the design of the SMTP protocol in the 1980s at USC's Information Sciences Institute, where he was later the director of ISI's High Performance Computing and Communications Division.
He was chairman of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) from 1994 to 1996.
Currently he is chief scientist and chairman at internet name management specialist Nominum.
