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.'"
Re:Caching would be great here too (Score:0, Insightful)
Caching is not as helpfull as you may imagine in this context. Think about it, what would a deep space probe need to look up? Interplanetary communication is all about the sending of commands and recieving of data... or are you one of those people who thinks there's a good reason to put people in space?
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:Caching would be great here too (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:mooncam (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.
Hmmmmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Per byte its probably still a lot cheaper than using SMS.
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:mooncam (Score:3, Insightful)
Rotation != the only thing that can cause Earthrise.