Vincent Cerf, working with Robert Kahn, had successfully demonstrated a triple-network Internet on November 22,1977, with communications from a moving van via packet radio, into the ARPA's land lines, and through satellites to Norway, London, back across the Atlantic into the ARPA to a UCLA terminal. The only spectators were Cerf and a few engineers. The Internet birth was a humble one.

In 1978, Cerf was persuaded by Danny Cohen of ISI to simplify the stand for Transmission Control Protocol (TCP/IP) into two layers, TCP and IP: TCP for the ARPA, and TP (Internet Protocol} for the host computer, adjacent to the Interface Message Processor (IMP). TCP guaranteed the Arpanet a reliable sequenced data stream and catered better to diverse applications such as packet radio. IP then became a very simple protocol that was easy for gateway computers to implement. Implementation proliferated since the protocols were in the public domain, and were adopted by the popular Unix type of computer.

Around 1978, Kahn set up an informal advisory body, later to become the Internet Advisory Board, to document the many of the details of the Internet that only he and Cerf knew.

The ARPA/Internet benefited greatly from the government ties and support, since the government was not wedded to a single computer vendor. Also, the TCP/IP, funded by the government, was available to all that wanted it.

In the late 70's, Robert Kahn as program manager at ARPA, was able to advance the Internet by bestowing large scale contracts for research and development. One was to Stanford University for a Very Large Scale Integrated Circuit" for $1.5 million, and a second to University of California at Berkeley to refine Unix. These investments paid off in further consolidation of the Internet and the explosion of development of Local-area networks (LANs}.

MCI Communications lured Cerf in 1982 to implement MCI Mail, the first e-mail service. Kahn took over Internet efforts, laying the groundwork for the Strategic Computing Program research effort, into multiprocessor machines, and large-scale databases.

Kahn left ARPA in 1985 to form a non-profit Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI}. CNRI focused on boosting the "information superhighway". Because of Kahn's credentials, The National Science Foundation, now the custodian to the Internet, awarded to his corporation the management of a gigabit networking program. With MCI Mail completed, Cerf became Kahn's first employee in 1986. CNRI built many early applications for the Internet including browsers, intelligent agents, and digital libraries.

Another big step was taken when Cerf petitioned the government to allow MCI Mail to connect to the Internet, a departure on research only connections. Cerf argued that commercial mail would benefit research by extending the links. Agreement was quickly drafted and signed due to Vincent Cerf's reputation, and that networking was small beans and nobody cared.

By June 1989, CNRI demonstrated MCI Mail connection and made it available for experimental use. Other online services quickly followed. CNRI set up the Internet Society for Internet standards. Cerf and Kahn, working together, had fathered the Internet.