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Vinton Cerf, known as the father of the Internet, said on Wednesday that the Web was outgrowing the planet Earth and the time had come to take the information superhighway to outer space.

“The Internet is growing quickly, and we still have a lot of work to do to cover the planet.” Cerf told the first day of the annual conference of Internet Society in Geneva where more than 1500 cyberspace fans have gathered to seek answers to questions about the tangled web of the Internet.

Cerf believed that it would soon be possible to send real-time science data on the Internet from a space mission orbiting another planet such as Mars. “There is now an effort under way to design and build an interplanetary Internet. The space research community is coming closer and closer and merging. We think that we will see interplanetary Internet networks that look very much like the ones we use today. We will need interplanetary gateways and there will be protocols to transmit data between these gateways, ” Cerf said.

Francois Fluckiger, a scientist attending the conference from the European Particle Physics Laboratory near Geneva, was not entirely convinced, saying: “We need dreams like this. But I don’t know any Martian whom I’d like to communicate with through the Internet.”

Cerf has been working with NASA’s Pasadena Jet Propulsion Laboratory—the people behind the recent Mars expedition—to design what he calls an “interplanetary Internet protocol.” He believes that astronauts will want to use the Internet, although special problems remain with interference and delay.

“This is quite real. The effort is becoming extraordinarily concrete over the next few months because the next Mars mission is in planning stages now,” Cerf told the conference.

“If we use domain names like Earth or Mars...jet propulsion laboratory people would be coming together with people from the Internet community.” He added.

“The idea is to take the interplanetary Internet design and make it a part of the infrastructure of the Mars mission.”

He later told a news conference that designing this system now would prepare mankind for future technological advances.

“The whole idea is to create an architecture so the design works anywhere. I don’t know where we’re going to have to put it but my guess is that we’ll be going out there some time,” Cerf said.

“If you think 100 years from now, it is entirely possible that what will be purely research 50 years from now will become commercial 100 years from now. The Internet was the same—it started as pure research but now it is commercialized.”

1. According to Cerf, the purpose to design interplanetary internet is to _____.

[A] send real-time science data

[B] communicate with astronauts

[C] lay foundation for future technological advances

[D] commercialize the technology

2. From the text, we learn that Vinton Cerf is _____.

[A] seeking answers to questions about the Internet web

[B] working on interplanetary Internet with collaboration of NASA

[C] trying to commercialize the interplanetary Internet

[D] exploring the possibility of establishing Internet network on Mars

3. It can be inferred from the last paragraph that _____.

[A] the dream to build interplanetary Internet can be fulfilled in the future

[B] interplanetary Internet will be commercialized in 100 years

[C] the research of Internet took 50 years

[D] it will take a long time to build interplanetary Internet

4. We know from the text that the Mars mission is _____.

[A] one of NASA’s internet projects

[B] an expedition to Mars

[C] the infrastructure of the interplanetary Internet

[D] to create an architecture on Mars

5. Which of the following is the main point of the text?

[A] The development of the Internet.

[B] The possibility of space research.

[C] Universal information superhighway.

[D] The technological advances of the Mars mission.

答案

1.C 2.B 3.A 4.B 5.C