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Comment by atombender | Hacker News Reader

Anyone know what he actually did at Google? Was it an active role, did he publish anything interesting? Or was it more of an Institute for Advanced Study kind of position?

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He was involved in the design, planning, and future-proofing one of the major redesigns of Google's data center fabric. Google, AFAIK still uses a derivative of the fabric today.

Disc: Former Googler, Cloud Networking.

He worked on a few X projects and had some free reign to push next gen ideas. Delay tolerant networking is the one I interacted with the most, as well as Google Loon, if you recall that.

Was DTN used in Loon? They are a natural fit.

DTN was, or was supposed to be.

Contract-graph routing (a core part of dtn - where do you send packets when there are delays in your route graph) was spec'd to be used, and I believe they may have done an experiment. The balloons had schedules or predictable winds, and satellites come and go (at least back then), so forwarding packets to the right carrier (or two) to get the next hop home was a big part of it.

Launder Google’s reputation, I assume.

He was hired to go to meetings and state “I’m vint cerf, I work at Google” then blab for 2 mins and introduce the actual speaker for a meeting/conference.

Similar ish to an influencer

I loved being able to say "vint cerf, my coworker, invented the internet"

maybe this is a good thing though, where someone with a huge, legitimate contribution and legacy gets to cash in on their status, vs. the typical influencer.

i'd say having "invented" the internet is a bigger claim to have influenced people rather than looking good in a bikini.

so fair game to cash in on that legacy.

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