Let's //Get\ Technical: 50 years of TCP, Taylor Swift tour wristbands tech, and more

In this week’s episode, we have the segment we call “Let’s //Get\ Technical,” featuring our CTO, John Graham-Cumming.

Host João Tomé and John Graham-Cumming start by celebrating the 50 years of the “TCP paper.” In May 1974, the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Transactions on Communications scientific journal published “A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication.” Authored by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, that was the paper that described the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) that supported the interconnection of multiple packet-switched networks into a network of networks. Split later into TCP and an Internet Protocol (IP), TCP and IP became core components of the Internet that DARPA launched operationally in 1983. The rest, as they say, is history.

Then, because Taylor Swift had two concerts in a 60,000-seat stadium in Lisbon this past weekend (May 24-25), we go over how John got to control four illuminated wristbands that are currently being used as part of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. We also got to admire the lovely little circuit board that puts everything together, from a Canadian company called PixMob. John’s blog about it was trending on Hacker News this week.

We also cover the recent, more technical blog posts on our blog. We begin with one that explains how Cloudflare Workers (our developer platform) now support running Fortran code, thanks to recent advancements in technology that allow Fortran to be translated into a format called WebAssembly. This post includes a fun example demonstrating how the system can predict numbers you draw. Additionally, we highlight the availability of new AI models, such as Meta Llama 3, on Workers AI, and discuss how we ensure that Cloudflare customers aren’t affected by Let’s Encrypt’s certificate chain change.

We also mention the recent submarine cable failures in Africa (seven countries impacted in May, after 13 were impacted in March), emphasizing the importance of Internet resilience. And we say goodbye to ICQ, the messaging service, that is shutting down after almost 28 years.

Last but not least, we leave a teaser for a longer extra episode solely about the importance of TCP, featuring three of our protocol experts.

Mentioned topics:

• What is TCP/IP?
• TCP - The Cloudflare blog
• Controlling the Taylor Swift Eras Tour wristbands with Flipper Zero
• Using Fortran on Cloudflare Workers
• Meta Llama 3 available on Cloudflare Workers AI
• How we ensure Cloudflare customers aren't affected by Let's Encrypt's certificate chain change
• East African Internet connectivity again impacted by submarine cable cuts