Vint Cerf Preps Interplanetary Internet Protocol 177
TechFiends32 writes "After years of working with NASA to bring Internet connectivity to deep space, scientists say Vint Cerf's efforts may be nearing completion. To combat the apparent challenges of extending the Internet into space (such as meteors and weighty, high-powered antennas), Cerf and others have made significant efforts, like adjusting satellite-based IP, and working on delay-tolerant networking (DTN) to address pure IP's limitations in space. According to principal engineer at The Mitre Corp., Keith Scott, 'The 2010 goal is designed to bring DTN to a sufficient level of maturity to incorporate it into designs for robotic and human lunar exploration.'"
Caching would be great here too (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
On a less serious hand, I hope the satellite IP connections are severed from the Ethernet (like electrical plants are (or should be in some cases), or hacking a satellite will be the next goal.
Re:Caching would be great here too (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Caching would be great here too (Score:5, Informative)
More information is available on the DTN Research Group's homepage: http://dtnrg.org [dtnrg.org].
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Hacking a satellite to get free TV is as bad as hacking electrical plants?
No, but I suppose hacking an old Cold War era Soviet "Weather Satellite" might be.
C'mon, you know they exist. Several hundred Hollywood movies can't all be wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
That would require bringing it home, retrofit it to be able to use IP and then putting it back up there. =)
Unless, of course, if they can do a "simple" firmware upgrade via standard satellite communications to make it talk IP.
But I agree that they probably should keep this interplanetary internet separate from The Internet, or at least have one hell of a firewall in between.
Imagine a manned lunar-lander being hacked, with some idiot hacker, who has no idea of what the system he has hacked actually does or c
Re:Caching would be great here too (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're missing the point. The general idea here is to have a packet switched communications system throughout the solar system. That way if a probe is in the shadow of, say, Jupiter, it can bounce a signal off a probe orbiting Venus, which will relay the signal back to Earth.
The end result would be a more robust communications system. In the future, interplanetary communications satellites could even end up doing most of the grunt-work, thus allowing probes and manned spacecraft to carry smaller communications packages designed to work with the network rather than broadcasting in as many conditions as possible.
such a network would also be useful for astronauts on another planet or meteor. Rather than setting up a communications station, they can use orbiting satellites to relay their transmissions. (Something which NASA already does on a smaller scale with probes like the Mars rovers.)
Re: (Score:2)
What kind of bandwidth have they got ?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This already exists on the Earth. A simple 802.11 wireless router can easily transmit this sort of information between cars and send traffic conditions up and down the highway. All that would be needed to finish the idea is a good application data protocol to identify what information you want to share,
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, astronauts on a meteor might appreciate a really good heat shield more than a reliable interplanetary data network.
They might have also appreciated getting _off_ of the meteoroid before it entered the Earth's atmosphere and became a meteor, but it's probably too late for that.
Re: (Score:2)
I think that an astronaut might really appreciate a good reliable interplanetary data network far more than a good heat shield.
Currently, the "Deep Space Network" that has been the communication system for dealing with space-based communications requires "tasking" parts of the network for each mission that is "out there" working.
One of the problems with the Viking spacecraft and currently the Voyager spacecraft was that it required paying salaries of individuals to orient the ground-based equipment receivin
Re: (Score:2)
I do believe the parent to your post was poking fun at my (rather silly) mistake of referring to an Asteroid as a Meteor. While not necessarily an incorrect usage, it does tend to refer to those rocks that hit the atmosphere and burn up. :-)
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, it is incorrect usage. Keep that in mind when your house is destroyed and you try to collect on your meteor insurance policy.
Would I make something like this up?
Re: (Score:2)
This would all become much clearer if you would look that word up. It doesn't mean what you think it means.
Re: (Score:2)
I was trying to give the benefit of the doubt to the parent post.... and not trying to get into a war of semantics like this one.
The "correct" term here would be "Meteoroid" and not "Meteor" as the context of the parent post was trying to imply something smallish that astronauts could look at but not necessarily so large as to imply that it is an asteroid.
These terms are much more fuzzy that you have implied here, and the spectrum of objects ranging from a grain of sand to an O-class star are not nearly so
Re: (Score:2)
What is there to look up? Well, you could start with "Meteor". You could end there too, since that's really the only word under discussion.
If you do, you'll probably learn something like this: "A meteor is the visible path of a meteoroid that enters the Earth's (or another body's) atmosphere, commonly called a shooting star. The visibility is due to the heat produced by the atmospheric entry. A very bright meteor, brighter than the apparent magnitude of Venus, may be called a fireball or bolide. [fact-archive.com]
If a me
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not nearly as stupid as you seem to be implying here.
The very definition of a "Meteoroid" is implied from the definitions you just gave... as the "Meteoroid" is what a "Meteor" is before it enters the atmosphere. Geesh! I already accepted the definition you are implying here and attempted to demonstrate what (perhaps) the proper term should have been used.
As I was trying to say, and I'll say it again, I'm trying to not nit pick with the definition as used by the grandparent poster. You are attacking
Re: (Score:2)
From what I've read, Mars is in fact the target for the first implementation of this new communication standard. Basically, there is going to be soon so much hardware from so many different countries on Mars that frequency bandwidth is starting to be a significant issue. Assuming that this is a trend of things to come and not a momentary fluke of current planetary exploration at the moment, it is quite reasonable to presume that interplanetary communication between the Earth and Mars is only going to beco
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. I personally think it would be amazing if we could develop a set of standard comsats to spread across the solar system. Want to explore Mars? No problem. We already have a communications infrastructure for you. Explore Europa? We've got sats around Jupiter, too. Throw in some sats traveling along the Interplanetary Superhighway and you've got better coverage than your average cell phone.
I think people tend to underestimate the shear enabling factor of such a communications network. Not only would su
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I'd like to put a few people in space, sans suit.
Re:Caching would be great here too (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
More work to be done (Score:5, Funny)
I assume then that at some point someone will have to write up a new RFC on "IP Over Space-Avian Carrier"?
Re: (Score:2)
As funny as it sounds, the IP-over Avian RFPs actually give some interesting insight into the IPN in terms of significant ping times and packet loss.
While the RFCs about avian packet carriers were largely tongue-in-cheek jokes, some of the concepts really did play a role in developing these new practical standards for very long range communications. At the very least, by thinking in terms of avian packet carriers, it is certainly the kind of "out of the box" thinking that allows you to try and pare down th
Re: (Score:2)
What is more concerning is the actual implementation of avian packets.
According to the wiki page for it, some LUG actually did it and sent nine "ping" packets and received responses. Pretty hilarious.
KA9Q (Score:5, Informative)
Phil Karn's old KA9Q implementation of TCP (for amateur radio) was designed to accommodate very long delays.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Phil Karn's old KA9Q implementation of TCP (for amateur radio) was designed to accommodate very long delays.
Only because it takes such a long time to tap out IP packets in morse code.
Re: (Score:2)
Heh, I remember Phil Karn from the days when cable modems were first being deployed in San Diego (he's an engineer at Qualcomm). He wrote the first linux client to allow computers to connect to the cable modem network (this being back in the days when roadrunner required a weird login application), and was also pretty active on the local USENET forum for RR... also wrote some papers on how to make nuclear weapons or something... good times, good times...
Weird seeing a name you knew briefly 10 years later...
mooncam (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:mooncam (Score:5, Informative)
actually there is no such thing as an earthrise on the moon, as the moon does not 'rotate' in relation to it's movement around the earth. At any point on the surface of the moon facing the earth, the earth will always be in the same point in the sky, always.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
actually there is no such thing as an earthrise on the moon, as the moon does not 'rotate' in relation to it's movement around the earth. At any point on the surface of the moon facing the earth, the earth will always be in the same point in the sky, always.
An 'earthrise' is still possible, you just have to put the mooncam on a buggy and drive in the correct direction.
Re:mooncam (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong.
Libration causes the visible face of the moon to oscillate slightly.
Therefore, you can see an Earthrise from certain points on the moon without being in motion relative to the moon yourself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libration
Re: (Score:2)
wobble != rotation
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Rotation != the only thing that can cause Earthrise.
Re:mooncam (Score:4, Interesting)
"Earthrise" is the name given to the famous picture taken of the earth from the moon. You have most likely seen it, it's the most famous picture of the Earth.
Africa is prominently visible in the picture, if you're curious.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Hm, I'm not sure you're correct. "Earthrise" is this picture [jackkennedy.net].
The famous picture of Earth with Africa visible is this picture [ning.com]. It wasn't taken from the Moon (I recall this from reading about it in the past, although I can't cite it; however it's easily provable, as the position of the camera is much too far below the Moon's ecliptic; you cannot see the entirety of Antarctica from any point on the Moon).
Re: (Score:2)
go figure. I have a huge photoshop on my wall, that has that earth picture where the other would be.
on the other hand it might be that there's more than one picture named "earthrise" since the title of my wallpaper when I got it was called the same thing.
Re:mooncam (Score:4, Informative)
Your argument seems good at the surface, but it's not true!
The truth is that the Moon librates [wikipedia.org] a bit (a few degrees), so there actually ARE earthrises when you are near the edge of the Earth-observable Moon surface. The Earth just doesn't do a full circle around the sky, it travels along a Lissajous figure.
Even Wikipedia is incorrect on this, at least when you look up "Earthrise".
Re:mooncam (Score:4, Informative)
Before anyone questions this: The angular span of the Moon's libration is a few times larger than the angular diameter of the Earth as seen from Moon.
Re: (Score:2)
as I said to the first guy to make this point, wobble != rotation
Re: (Score:2)
I will when I find the book when I read about that, to avoid the citation needed problem.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Earthrise on Moon IS possible. Moon's orbit is not a perfect circle, that's why we have http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librations [wikipedia.org]
In the best case Earth rises at about 15 degrees.
Bold (Crazy) Prediction (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe not, but wouldn't it be crazy if it was?
Re: (Score:2)
The only way to make ipv6 is to force it down the throats of the ISPs. Too bad force and business don't mix. Unless it's the businesses that force something through(like the DMCA)...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
From TFA (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:From TFA (Score:4, Interesting)
You seem to be extrapolating quite a bit to say that this scheme is much more vulnerable to critical data loss. (And your claim about DoS is pretty irrelevant when you consider that all implementations of this protocol will be owned by NASA and their associates.)
Do you really think, based on just TFA, that Vint Cerf of all people would design such a flawed protocol? The point of custody transfer is that retransmissions can be handled by the routers that form the network, rather than wasting precious power using a planetside rover that has better things to do.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Or you could just use out-of-band confirmations for critical data, and retransmit at an appropriate interval when you don't see the confirmation. And even that only applies to unsolicited transmissions -- for interactive traffic the remote host already expects a reply, and can simply retransmit the request if it doesn't get one.
For example, it would be trivial to use this model for loose interactivity without wasting more than a few bytes of bandwidth:
1. Earth host transmits new instructions with sequence n
Re: (Score:2)
The question is:
In interplanetary transmissions, do you save more bandwidth by having less overhead, or by not having to retransmit every lost bit all the way from, say, a probe on Titan to Mission control?
I don't know, since I haven't studied the problem, nor worked with interplanetary transmissions.
I'd wager that there's quite a lot of bandwidth overhead lost to error control and correction in such transmissions today in order to have as few retransmissions as possible, though.
Re: (Score:2)
Do you really think, based on just TFA, that Vint Cerf of all people would design such a flawed protocol?
Yes, if he can design it under the assumption that all nodes are trusted. As long as there's an appropriate node authorization presented at connection time, then the node can safely queue such data on the authorized party's behalf.
Re: (Score:2)
I understand why they want to do it this way, but the seperation of responsibility was put there for a reason in TCP waaaaay back in the DARPA days so that if any link goes down you have no data loss. What happens if critical data is being transmitted from a source, and the source gets cut off. The retransmitting router gets hit by a meteor and is trashed. Critical data loss. Am I missing something?
Um, if you only have one retransmitting router, then you'll loose your critical connection to that end point i
Re:From TFA (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't simply send your packet and then wipe your cache. You keep the packets at every hop it traverses until you know that it has arrived at its destination, so that you can resend it in case of a transmission error or fatal equipment failure.
Especially since you, with these distances, can have a large chunk of data in transit between two satellites due to the slow pace of light and radio waves.
That, along with the limited transmission speeds, is also one of the reasons why you do not want to resend lost packets all the way from the originator, which is still possible in the worst case scenario where the data is lost in all the routing satellites.
Unless the probe, or Mars lander or whatever also loose the data before it gets through.
Actually, such a system is more secure, from a data loss point of view, since the data can get through even if it is lost at both the originator and at some point in transfer, since it can be resent by any router that it has passed through.
It makes sensitive data vulnerable to interception though... In case some aliens where to abduct a satellite that's caching data before it can be purged. =)
Re: (Score:2)
And so the notion of "aitm" (alien in the middle) attack came into life.
Remember, you saw it here first!
Re: (Score:2)
You're right that it's not possible to lose data in the middle of the network with pure TCP. But if the original source gets hit by a meteor in the middle of (re)transmitting, you'd still lose the connection.
Plus the worst-case scenario you describe here is this:
1. I request data from a remote resource
2. The remote resource transmits my data to some intermediate node
3. Data is cached at some intermediate node, and the source is notified of the competed transfer
4. The intermediate node is destroyed
5. I notic
Re: (Score:2)
Transmission logs on the source server cannot be considered a reliable indicator of delivery
It can if there's two types of entries.
Node reception confirmed.
Destination reception confirmed.
If only the first one is logged, reception counts as failed.
If both is logged, reception is verified.
Just requires a notification of reception to be sent back from the receiver to the sender, apart from the notification sent to every node in the path.
A little more overhead, but might be worth it. =)
Excellent (Score:3, Funny)
Now we'll be able to send e-mail to Dr Edgar Mitchell's aliens and ask them if they exist !
Great! (Score:2)
Soon Davidson will be able to spam martians.
In related news ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
So what, their Death Star gets in the way too often?
Re: (Score:2)
No, that would be AT&T.
Alien Ascii Pr0n (Score:2)
Interplanetary ICMP (Score:2, Funny)
~$ traceroute voyager2.heliopause.net
traceroute to voyager2.heliopause.net (207.46.193.254), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 192.168.0.15 (192.168.0.15) 0.180 ms 0.186 ms 0.205 ms
2 netblock.dslcarrier.com (66.159.218.1) 14.379 ms 17.076 ms 20.048 ms
3 satrptr.spacenet.net (66.51.203.33) 36.531 ms 45.014 ms 42.245 ms
4 mars.spacenet.net (206.223.143.41) 92.229 ms 101.596 ms 99.575 ms
5 jupiter.spacenet.net (216.239.43.12) 220.073 ms 266.554 ms 254.288 ms
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Man I wish I could afford a faster than light connection like you... Here I am stuck on a legacy electromagnetic link:
~$ ping voyager2.heliopause.net
PING voyager2.heliopause.net (207.46.193.254) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from (207.46.193.254): icmp_seq=1 ttl=54 time=72877083.5 ms
64 bytes from (207.46.193.254): icmp_seq=2 ttl=54 time=72877853 ms
64 bytes from (207.46.193.254): icmp_seq=3 ttl=54 time=72979083.2 ms
64 bytes from (207.46.193.254): icmp_seq=4 ttl=54 time=72877483.6 ms
64 bytes from (207.46
Re: (Score:2)
Wouldn't we know by now if we're going to ever get superluminal communication? You know, because the signal would travel back in time?
Re: (Score:2)
When he said that, he meant mutual seeing itself. because Marty was busy with the Lybians, he never noticed himself on the ridge. Ergo, no problem.
The paradox is created when you alter your past, not just observe it, since it won't result in a change to the time line.
Re: (Score:2)
I just thought the numbers looked a little low ... (only seconds to Voyager2?)
it'd actually be a bit of a pain, as you'd need the distances between each hop, and I don't have SPICE [nasa.gov] installed on this machine.
MITRE should be all caps (Score:2)
MITRE (all caps) is the name of the company, not Mitre (in case someone wants to update the original post.)
in space... (Score:4, Funny)
in space, no one can hear you ping.
Also appropriate for station wagon full of tapes? (Score:5, Funny)
Hmmmmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Per byte its probably still a lot cheaper than using SMS.
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm...
Why not simply put a few 3G towers around the solar system?
Then all probes can send data via SMS, pictures via MMS and even do video calls to send realtime videos!
And the phone companies can get their part of the NASA/ESA/Whatever-budgets they so rightfully deserve. =)
Interstellar networking (Score:3, Funny)
Virus Uploads still allowed? (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, alien virus upload capability was discontinued when they killed of the Apple Powerbooks and Mac OS 8.x and 9.x OS. Apple MacBooks don't come with this feature, but they do come with the ability to be easily recognized as Unix and used by 13 year olds [wikipedia.org].
Why read TFA? (Score:2)
When we have a perfectly good system [wikipedia.org] already? We're going to need some really big flags, a couple of long poles. And a good telescopes.
ARIN's Dilemma (Score:2)
How many IP addresses should they allocate to the rest of the universe??
This is just great ... (Score:2)
Now I can get SPAM from fucking Jupiter ... bloody wonderful.
Read your copy (Score:2)
To deal with "meteors and weighty antennae"? Duh.... The #1 problem is *time*. You are going to have a *real* slow up/download when you're on Mars, and it's on the other side of the sun: hours.
mark "didn't even begin to talk about t a l k i n g t o T i T a n"
Router management (Score:2)
Network management may be the biggest challenge. IP is already designed to deal with link failure and congestion. But, when the router out by Ganymede is down and won't come up you can't just dispatch a network engineer to zip out there with a laptop and console cable. (much as I'd like some aspects of that job ;-)
We had a suitable protocol thirty years ago (Score:2)
UUCP (with Mapalias)
Re: (Score:2)
Pathalias.
Re:A new area awaiting patentification (Score:5, Funny)
It has come to our attention that an earthling called Vint Cerf is making unauthorized use of our work in violation of GPTO (Galactic Patents and Trademarks Office) patent number 0932984720392837409 for Interplanetary Internet Protocol.
We demand that he must immediately cease the use and distribution of our work and that he forwards all copies and relevant documentation to us by the earliest space courier. Failure to do so will result in a lawsuit to the amount of our estimated damages of 1,008,076,123.09 galactic credits (equal to 0.0008 USD).
Very truly yours,
Aliens
P.S Greetings, Dr Mitchell
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, those Aliens have a pretty crappy economy.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Dear Aliens,
Have you met our representative - Mr Darl McBride?
Now about that technology you stole from us...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I had the privilege of attending one of his lectures back in 1998 and I can almost remember his entire speech.
Was he wearing his infamous "IP everywhere" shirt ?
Re: (Score:2)
Consider the effects of relativity on GPS [wikipedia.org] satellites. The time skew for a GPS satellite in low earth orbit is about 38 microseconds per 24 hour day. Thus, it isn't hard to imagine that links in an interplanetary network could operate for days without their respective clocks differing by more than a few frame lengths.
In a high-bandwidth link, the routers would probably have to adjust the transmit rates, but timestamps would be a fairly minor issue (and trivially fixed with ntp).
Re: (Score:2)
TCP wouldn't, as it's Transport (Layer 4 [wikipedia.org]). What you talk about would be either Data Link [wikipedia.org] or Physical [wikipedia.org]. (I'm going to assume Physical, as it's dealing with aspects of modulation).
As for needing to compensate for it ... yes [ieee.org]. And it's still [ieee.org] a problem. (And testing [nasa.gov] sucks, too.)
Re: (Score:2)
If the sun were shrunk to be a meter in diameter, Earth would be a dot 200 meters away, Pluto would be a decent 5 mile bike ride away, and the nearest stars would be on the other side of Earth. And the fastest probe we'
Re: (Score:2)
Hello Gnarg,
Your opposite gender progeny creator says its not so emboldened!!!
e.x.t_e-n+d your r=e=p=r=o=d=u=c=t=i=v=e f~l~u~i~d -t-r-a-n-s-f-e-r p-r-o-t-u-b-e-r-a-n-c-e.
S01-3 V1ag-rrra, C1aLLiSS/
Make OGPC happy - replace universalwideweb with uww below
universalwideweb.solpharm89.sol ...
Yeah, but you get cool ping times and traceroutes. (Score:2)
I would love to know what ping and traceroute for something like marslander01.nasa.gov would look like although you'd probably have to dramatically adjust timeouts (and don't wait for an ACK before you send the next packet - could be fun for the team to build a simulation..
Just before we were given the whole "www" idea and Spyglass and Mosaic appeared I remember we used to ping a site rumored to be on one of the poles (North, I think) called mcmurdo, and then show a traceroute to it. It was a nice way to d