DoD to Put Internet Router in Space

narramissic writes "ITworld is reporting that the Department of Defense plans to launch in the first quarter of 2009 a satellite-based router to deliver military communications. Satellite operator Intelsat will manage the three-year Internet Routing In Space (IRIS) project, while Cisco will provide IP networking software for the on-board router. After testing, the satellite will be available for commercial use. From the article: 'Potential nonmilitary benefits of the IRIS program include the ability to route IP (Internet Protocol) traffic between satellites in space in much the same way packets are moved on the ground, reducing delays, saving on capacity and offering greater networking flexibility, Lloyd Wood, space initiatives manager in the Global Defense, Space & Security division of Cisco, said Thursday.'"

Lost DoD hardware

[andy314159pi]

DoD to Put Internet Router in Space

It seems like they are always misplacing shit.

Re:

[stefanlasiewski]

It seems like they are always misplacing shit.

Sheesh! Just trace the cable!

sounds like a plan

[User 956]

Well, the Army is getting routed in Iraq, might as well get a head start on getting routed in space as well.

routing back to the states: no route to host

[davidwr]

A bunch of soldiers were hoping to be on the next packet back to the USA but they got a "no route to host, try again in 3 months" error message [news.com.au].

Yes I know it's off-topic but laugh, it's funny.

Re:routing back to the states: no route to host

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

First: Learn how moderating works on slashdot. They can't comment non-AC because their accurate flamebait moderations would go away.

Second: You ARE bating flame. Hence your flamebait moderations, which in my opinion, were correctly applies.

Third: This is not the place for a debate on why you're a dick bag and why the guy who made the joke you're getting all pissed off about is an asshole.

Fourth: Just because you have family in the armed forced doesn't mean we automatically give half a shit about your opinion.

Fifth: I'm an asshole for making this reply.

Re:

[Workaphobia]

> "I know my rights, know the people that defend those rights as best able, and am delighted that I have the right to "unpopular" speech..."

I find it ironic that you consider your speech to be unpopular compared to the OP. Both positions seem equally tiresome to me.

> "Personally, I think it's funny as hell that while they can gripe about my posts being flamebait or trolling, and even mod me down for it, they can't tell me WHY the OP was supposed to be "funny""

Very well, I will explain the humor of the

Re:

[geekoid]

You want vistory in Iraq? killing civilians won't do it.

Hiring mercenaries that kill people when ever they want, won't do it.

A rebuilding plan annouced to the people, updated monthly, with schedules and real, visual, attainable goals and accomplishments is the only way to achive victory in Iraq.
The . Only . Way .

This does not mean 'Handcuffing' the solders, it means giving them a fucking chance, cause right now they ain't got one.

Re:

[Anonymous Meoward]

Hear, hear! Think of this from a software developer's perspective:

"We would like you to take on this project, with this largely undefined goal. We don't know what the requirements for the goal are, but we think you can figure them out. Incidentally, we think we've anticipated every unknown, except of course for those things we don't know we don't know. And we want this done as cheaply and quickly as possible, but don't worry: everyone in the organization today is on your side. Your budget only needs t

Re:

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

I don't remember being asked about invading Iraq. I remember Afghanistan being invaded and one day we were hitting Iraq with missiles and bombs. Shifting the war from one country to another. From one objective to another. Forgetting the first country and objective.

Re:

[The Great Pretender]

"updated monthly, with schedules and real, visual, attainable goals and accomplishments is the only way"

You took a six sigma course didn't you...

Oh how I wish we could draw out a SyProc for life and human nature

Re:

[Archangel Michael]

You realize, that they are doing exactly that. Except that they are often being blown up for the effort without the real ability to shoot back. Right? You knew that. RIGHT??

Oh, you didn't see it on CBSNBCABCCNNFOX so it must not be true.

Re:

[Stanistani]

>Win what?

Why, a set of matching melamine dishes.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Those numbers aren't even close to right.

[User 956]

You might try actually fact-checking those numbers. [globalsecurity.org] The actual number of US casualties in Iraq is almost 3,300, with another 23,000 wounded.

And yes, "wounded" includes losing limbs, eyes, and all sorts of other body parts that don't, on average, sustain major damage when you're out and about in Washington DC.

Re:

[Mockylock]

lmao.. ever been to DC?

Re:

[User 956]

Using Pentagon statistics cross-checked with independent research, King said he came up with an annualized Iraqi civilian death rate of 27.51 per 100,000.

Ok, so it sounds like he's counting the years when Saddam was still in power. Which, of course, would bring down the average, because the country wasn't in total chaos. But to be perfectly honest, they could have just made the numbers up. They don't cite their sources, and they don't cite their research, so it's impossible to see how they're calculating

Re:

[User 956]

Yeah, the whole thing is really just too bad. Any any website trying to minimize how bad it is, does a tremendous disservice to the people over there that are getting shot at every day. I guess it just seems kind of weird that to me that some people think "supporting the troops" means "pretending the troops aren't in a completely disorganized, deadly shitstorm"

It's a warzone. There's no way civil society can compare. There's just no way.

Re:

[PopeRatzo]

That means that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in the U.S. Capital than you are in Iraq ..

It may also be because the troops in Iraq have much better health care than the people who live in Washington DC.
 

Security.

[Anonymous Coward]

"From the article: 'Potential nonmilitary benefits of the IRIS program include the ability to route IP (Internet Protocol) traffic between satellites in space in much the same way packets are moved on the ground, reducing delays, saving on capacity and offering greater networking flexibility, Lloyd Wood, space initiatives manager in the Global Defense, Space & Security division of Cisco, said Thursday.'"

You forgot greater security.

Re:

[scruffy]

WEP or WPA?

Re:

[tygt]

reducing delays

Really!

Wow. Last satellite internet service I had had astounding delays.

Of course, that was with a geosync satellite, and without RTFA I can guess they're planning on using sats which are considerably closer than this, but if they're really close then they'll zooming around too fast I'd image that could cause trouble with their OSPF or BGP....

Re:

[DragonWriter]

Wow. Last satellite internet service I had had astounding delays.

Well, yeah. You were, I presume, on the ground. Chances are, so were the computers with which you were ultimately trying to connect. That's often going to give you a big delay going through a satellite compared to going through ground-based routers exclusively.

They are talking about reducing delays for IP traffic between other satellites compared to going through ground-based routers, which is a pretty different scenario.

Re:

[The_Wilschon]

Distance from Earth's surface to a geosync satellite directly overhead is about 35,000 km, giving a round trip distance of 70,000 km. Presumably you were talking to the satellite via some sort of electromagnetic radiation, which travels about 300,000,000 km/s. So, the total round trip time is less than 0.3 milliseconds. Even if the satellite were close to the horizon rather than overhead, this won't increase by all that much.

The bare fact that you are talking to a satellite is not enough to incur notic

Re:

[tygt]

Sort of yes, sort of no.... data would stream just fine, but interactive traffic was attrocious.

I think you forgot what a "round-trip" is - it's not just up to the satellite and back; a packet round-trip has to make that trip *twice*.

Consider a ping, which is what typing on a telnet/ssh type link requires; assuming optimal packet transfer (one each way), we get earth-sat-earth-sat-earth, so four transitions. Even if we ignore the fact that I wasn't directly under the satellite (I'm at 39N, and about 11

Re:

[The_Wilschon]

Crap. I made a rather stupid mistake: 70000km / 3e8 (m/s) != 0.0002333s. I divided km/m and got 1 instead of 1000. So yes, satellite distance would contribute on the order of hundreds of milliseconds to ping time, rather than tenths of milliseconds as I originally said. Hundreds of milliseconds to ping time is significant for sure. I suspect I would notice a 700ms delay.

My apologies.

Re:

[tygt]

It's easy to forget that the Moon is more than one light-second away from us. I mean, it's just *there* so we think it's so close, or really, just don't think much about it.

This can't be the first time

[davidwr]

Someone HAS to have put a router in space before. Not for this particular application mind you, but I'd be shocked if no packet ever got routed while in space.

Now, who will be the first company to admit they got pwnd in space?

Re:

[BadERA]

They have, I don't think the article is saying this will be the first IP router in space. In fact, Cisco just carried out the first IPv6 routing in space the other day ...

Re:This can't be the first time

[brunascle]

years ago (around 1999) my family got to be a tester for a new (potential) satellite ISP. they gave us a free PC, stuck a satellite dish in the ground, and said "have fun."

it sucked. it wasnt reliable at all, and it was very slow. it was the same for everyone else. jackasses never removed the satellite dish either. i heard about one guy who took an axe to his just to get the damn thing out.

Re:

[SuiteSisterMary]

I remember the release notes for Solaris 2.6, back in, what, the late '90s, mentioning changes made to the TCP/IP stack to improve performance when dealing with satellites.

Re:

[john82]

Someone HAS to have put a router in space before...

They did. It's called Iridium [wikipedia.org]. To date, the only system of its kind.

Re:

[inviolet]

NASA has been investigating using TCP/IP for communications with satellite since at least 2000 ...

Well, Blackboard Software had better hurry and file another patent [slashdot.org] then: "Method of sharing educational media... on the internet... in space!"

Re:

[michrech]

Yes, they have! :) It's called DirecWay or now Hughes Net. Those satellites transmit IP data streams from the ground, to a satellite, and then back to you. These guys have been doing since the 1990s.

I don't think this is the same as what is mentioned in the article. I think the article is talking about routing IP traffic between sat's in space, not from a customer on the ground, to the satellite, to the endpoint company, to the internet. Hell, that was spelled out in the damned summary.

Now, what this coul

hmmmm.....

[teeloo]

Can't wait til the hackers of the world try to hack into that one. I wonder what laws would apply? Are there any "space" laws per se?

Re:

[IgLou]

I'm still waiting for email spam to make it's way into space. Then in a deep voice I plan to say "SPACE SPAM!"

More serious note, space is a "territory" of sorts... still the ownership (and who's laws will prevail) of that territory will depend on who can assert their "control" over that territory. So that will most likely be some corporation. :P

Which leads to an obligatory:
I for one welcome our new SPACE IBM overlords!

Re:

[guruevi]

There is a convention that space doesn't belong to a certain country and that they won't put WMD's or other weapons in space. Again, this is just a convention/treaty, something that the USGov isn't really keen or good at applying.

Re:

[WED Fan]

"Jail" in this case be spelled suspiciously like that little American enclave in Cuba. Say "Say hallo to my leettle Al Qaeda Friend."

Stats??

[otacon]

What kind of bandwidth are we talking here? but I guess the better question is what routing protocol is it going to use, EIGRP? OSPF? BGP?

Re:

[robpoe]

S.P.A.C.E.

Statically
Practical
Application
(for)
Countering
Extra-Terrestrials

Re:

[beartrash]

"We are talking about Internet router here. this will just be another router .. only special thing is the location (i.e. space)> I guess it will use BGP as all the other routers in todays Internet."

How many paths out will this router have? If it's only one or two, statically route it or use a couple of differently weight static routes and IGP wouldn't make much sense in most likely scenarios, maybe with NAT if a few nodes are going to access it.

If an IGP is necessary (if there are eventually several "sp

Re:

[Workaphobia]

I think it'll be interesting once we have enough orbital and interplanetary routing to warrant developing protocols that specifically deal with perpetually changing links with good convergence time. I can just imagine OMRP - Orbital Mechanics Routing Protocol, which tries to maintain a complete graph with every neighbor in the solar system but routers around the blinding sun.

traceroute

[chris_mahan]

traceroute is going to be more interesting.

spaceroute!!!

[servertary]

spaceroute!!!

The WWW is dead! Long live the OWW!

[rts008]

Next someone will want to change it from www.* to oww.* ( orbital wide web).

Just what the ISS needed, viagra and pr0n spam flooding the space station's inbox.
Spankin' the space monkey...oh yeah!

Re:

[Workaphobia]

I heard somewhere that you can actually get good low-latency ping times from satellites that are not in geosychronous orbit, since they are then allowed to orbit at a lower altitude and fly over the continent. You just need to form a network of them since they'll be in the other hemisphere half the time.

Really?

[HalAtWork]

Really, Drink or Die is putting a router in space? Is this part of some off-planet hosting scheme?

Re:

[Penguinisto]

Hey! It could've been some sort of new Day of Defeat RPG, you insensitive clod!

/P

No matter what, the ping times are going to suck..

[Glasswire]

... doesn't matter if the routers are milspec or not. Speed of light is speed of light.

Re:No matter what, the ping times are going to suc

[GigsVT]

Yes, but that's irrelevant.

The article didn't say it was going to be in geostationary orbit. Don't assume that just because a geostationary satellite internet satellite has 650ms pings that all satellites will.

A satellite could orbit as low as 100 miles. The latency could be a few ms.

And around the world she goes

[davidwr]

As one satellite pings the router that's passing below in a different orbit:

geostat1# ping spacerouter1
Pinging spacerouter1 [300.300.300.300] with 128 bytes of data:

Reply from 300.300.300.300: bytes=128 time1ms TTL=128
Reply from 300.300.300.300: bytes=128 time 100ms TTL=128
Reply from 300.300.300.300: bytes=128 time 700 TTL=128
Request timed out. ...
Request timed out.
Reply from 300.300.300.300: bytes=128 time 700 TTL=128
Reply from 300.300.300.300: bytes=128 time 100ms TTL=128
Reply from 300.300.300.300: bytes=

You mean speed of Radio signals ...

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

c is not the important speed here. Actually, the speed of the radio signals that go from and to the satellite. I think running fiber to the satellite would be pretty hard, and optic comunication using lasers is a bit far away, specially since the satellite is not still, and neither is the earth.
Off course, if we take into account that all the "speeds" we may measure are eventually determined by the value of c, your comment would be correct.

Re:

[LWATCDR]

Radio is light or light is radio. Radio is just a different "color" of light same as X-Rays.

Re:

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

That's why i said that eventually the value of c determines this speed in a way. X-rays, visible light, radio signals, microwave are all electromagnetic radiations, they work on the same principle, but their wavelengths differ, so, when we are talking about latency in communications, they are for our purpose completely different things.

Re:

[LWATCDR]

No it will make no difference in latency. It would make a difference in bandwidth. If you could modulate X-Ray easily then you could really send some data.

Re:

[Chelloveck]

I'm sure that if necessary, Congress can pass a law to mandate a faster speed of light.

Oy, vey...

[Penguinisto]

Wouldn't want to try and play any decent FPS on that puppy... the lag has GOT to be horrible.

Speaking of which, how DO they manage "realtime" data on that w/o the lag? It wouldn't exactly be true realtime if ~250ms delay keeps chucking in there. While that may be no biggie now, I can see where that would/could be a factor as real battlefields become just as data-dependant as the game ones. (cue lots of "haha, you got pwned by the Chinese!" jokes here, but seriously... I wonder how they're going to eventually get around that; the physics would be gnarly at best...)

/P

Re:

[torqer]

Lag is exactly the reason why they want to put the satellite there. It will route traffic between satellites in space, without need for the lag of travelling to terrestial router and then return to space.

Not realtime, but 2x speed of existing system

[davidwr]

TFA said the existing system involves

source - satellite#1 - ground-based router - satellite#2 - destination

The new system will be
source - satellite #1 - space router - satellite #2 - destination

or even better

source - space router - destination

Depending on where the satellite is, you may have just shaved a few tenths of a second off the one-way trip.

Re:Oy, vey...

[arthurpaliden]

Realtime means predictable delay not no delay.

Re:

[TooMuchToDo]

Fair enough. For a number of years I've had to work with a client who uses Direcway, and let me tell you, latency is ridiculous when you're using satellites in geosync orbit. While I think this is a step in the right direction, some sort of protocol is going to need to be bolted on to TCP/IP when it's used in space so physical distance is taken into account more then logical network difference (every mile counts when you're talking 200,000+ miles via space, fiber etc. end to end).

Re:

[forkazoo]

Whether 250ms qualifies as real-time depends on your application. For a game of speed chess, maybe. For FPS, probably not.

No, not really. Real Time is an actual technical piece of jargon with a specific definition. It just means that the amount of time something takes is very deterministic and predictible. A Real Time CPU, for example, can be shockingly slow because it takes out all the stuff which can potentially (but not consistently) speed things up.

Re:

[Hoi Polloi]

I look forward to getting spam from "[e-mail]"

Re:

[tktk]

Speaking of which, how DO they manage "realtime" data on that w/o the lag? It wouldn't exactly be true realtime if ~250ms delay keeps chucking in there.

Easy, they just add +250ms.

Re:

[flappinbooger]

Easy.

Subspace.

Next!

Re:

[WED Fan]

believe it or not, computer networks can be used for things other than gaming!

But, it IS for the games. Real games. As in real, old-time games held in Greece, Rome, Mayan ball courts. Our games use real assets. You are so screwed.

Apologies to Jim Henson

[mapmaker]

Piiiiinnngs iiiiiin Spaaaaaaace!

Jewwwws, iiiiiin Spaaaaaaace!

[hguorbray]

Mel had a pretty good take on this too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lpc-2CH1lg [youtube.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_World, _Part_I [wikipedia.org]

I'm just sayin'

Let me guess.....

[8127972]

.... the SSID will be Linksys right?

great

[robpoe]

That will be great, until some script kiddy decides to pwnz0r the sat link ...

astounding..

[eebra82]

So how are they going to build a series of tubes in space?

Re:

[Lord Bitman]

using an elevator made of carbon nanotubes, duh.

In space, the tubes are called

[transporter_ii]

wormholes...and they really help cut the latency down.

Transporter_ii

Nobody? OK

[Hognoxious]

I guess I'll have to step up and take one for the team.

In Soviet Russia, router launches you!

Re:

[SQLGuru]

Instead of America On-Line, AOL will become Astronaut On-Line.

I wonder if a spaced based router will improve their ping response times. :)

Layne

1st Lame Star Trek Ref?

[Evil W1zard]

DOD To Boldy Route Where No Man Has Routed Before.... These are the voyages of the Star switch Cisco...

Defense satellite ? Bad idea...

[Eric Damron]

Is it just me or does anyone else think that putting a satellite into space that will route critical information for our Defense Department is a bad idea after China made clear it is working on satellite killer technology?

Re:

[Bluesman]

That's right, because we all know the Internet itself is vulnerable to this kind of physical attack, so putting it in space is just silly!

Oh wait.

Re:

[Eric Damron]

You're probably right that there isn't any ASAT weapons to date able to target it and I'm sure it would be an act of war to do so. What I'm worried about is that in a future war they will be targeted. I don't think it would be a good thing to depend too heavily on that route of communication.

I guess it just doesn't seem that hard to me to destroy a satellite with a nuke even if the nuke isn't well aimed.

log-in?

[ElephanTS]

Anyone want to take a bet they leave the default security settings on so you can hack in using the admin/password combo?

Works for my neighbor!

We're with the government....

[Kozz]

We're with the government. We're here to help.

*shivers*

Anybody else's tinfoil hats giving you that tingling-feeling right about now?

Re:

[sethstorm]

We're with the government. We're here to help.
Reagan's declaration for businesses go open season on workers(due to misreading of PATCO) changes the scariest words in the English language to:
We're with the corporate interest. We're here to help.
Given the turn of many a business from ethical conduct and the gutting of many worker protections, the government now reflects who has the most money and influence.

In Space

[vivaoporto]

But this is nothing. This would be news if they had put an Internet Router ... in space!!! [slashdot.org] Oh, wait...!

That's no moon . . .

[cashman73]

. . . it's a Network Operations Center !

Hmmm

[Kelz]

*log on to military PC/open browser*
//192.168.1.1
User: Administrator
Pass: [blank]

satellite internet?

[rebootconrad]

Maybe I'm being dense... but don't satellite internet providers route packets through space all day long?

SmartNet

[jamesh]

I wonder how much they'll be paying Cisco for a 4 hour response advance replacement warranty on that baby...

192.168.1.1 password: admin

[solitas]

'Nuff said. :)

Wonderful but

[Plutonite]

how are you going to stop the Chinese from blowing the damn thing into a shmazillion pieces with a laser? I'd hate to get a HTTP 404 in the middle of a battlefield. It would be an absolute killer of a moment.

Been done on ISS

[ChaoticLimbs]

PEHG and PEHB are both ethernet TCP/IP routers. Payload Ethernet Hub Gateway and Payload Ethernet Hub Bridge.

Giving new meaning ...

[upside]

to "star topology".

E.T....

[Half a dent]

...email home.

pwn3d!

[6Yankee]

The Tamil Tigers [slashdot.org] are going to love this...

Re:How long until the rest of the world wants acce

[nharmon]

Indeed, what if routing packets over satellite becomes that much cheaper than underwater fiber that it replaces it entirely and the country controlling those satellites can shutdown a nation's access to the internet on a whim?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Transit times for packets routed through space (to geosynchronous satellites) is much much larger than those routed over the surface.

Think seconds, not milliseconds.

Re:

[Oktober Sunset]

There is such a freaking enormous amount of cable under the atlantic that we aren't going to run out any time soon. And if we do, space rocket or boat which do you think is cheaper to operate? Secondly, how is that different to say France, Italy and Austria ganging up and stopping Switzerland from accessing cables out of the country, which they could do now if they really wanted, really, this would make the ability to 'cut off' a country harder, cos they would have a whole bunch of satellites to choose fr

Re:

[buhatkj]

i think it's naive to think that the us gov couldnt do that anyway if they wanted. we run the root servers, us military designed the internet, i think they understand how it works, and i think they could effectively shut somebody down if they really wanted to. the thing is, they wont, because regardless of how it's done, it would be obvious, and would make us look like really bad guys.
even if it's as pedestrian as explosives on the cables, i think that possibility exists, and if not, id be wondering why n

Not sure if DirectPC is a router or not

[davidwr]

Satellite Internet can work two ways: The satellite is the router, or the satellite is a bridge or medium-converter box just like some cheap DSL or cable modems.

If I were DirectPC I'd want my satellite to be as simple and lightweight as possible.

Is this like packets being routed like usa-satellite-satellite-satellite-africa?

See the article for an explanation.

The long and short of it is this is designed to replace traffic that is currently going
somewhere-satellite-ground based router-satellite-somewhere
where the "somewheres" on either end are optional.

Re:What do I know about it?

[Skippyboy]

I work at Johnson Space Center and we are testing this right now. The idea is that in the future (ie when we have a moonbase, etc) that all communication will be in IP packets over RF links.
Currently the RF links use multiplexed frames with different PN sequences and frame sync headers to communicate, so the position of each bit within the frame means something.
With IP packets, we wouldn't really have to decode/demux the frames to get the information. Each entity could send data based on its IP address. As mentioned before - the lag time issue is gonna be pretty messy, unless we used UDP or something similar. We are just in the beginning stages right now for our purposes, so just configuring the routers and getting the data into an RF link and be errorless is what we are fighting.
Hope that sheds some light on why. Also - the frequencies we are talking about are going to be S, K, Ku, Ka, and higher, so it isn't likely that a script kiddy will have access to that kind of equipment. Also - the links will be encrypted and PN spread, making it less likely to be intercepted/hax0r'd...

Re:

[buhatkj]

actually we of course were the first to shoot down a satellite, so in some sense perhaps they were simply playing catch-up. although, the advantage of the chinese system is that the missile can be launched from the ground. the real issue was that since the 80's there has been a moratorium on anti-satellite weapon research, and china clearly violated that.
see here for info on the US test: http://www.voughtaircraft.com/heritage/products/h t ml/asat.html [voughtaircraft.com]

Re:

[buhatkj]

oh wow ok cool, i had never heard of that one.