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Interplanetary Internet Tested In Space 124

Posted by timothy
from the best-place-for-it-really dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "After Vint Cerf planned the Interplanetary Internet, there's a press release saying that the Interplanetary Internet is now being tested in space, using the Bundle Protocol developed by the Delay-Tolerant Networking Research Group. There's a conference paper with details on the testing too. These guys were previously the first to test IPv6 in space. Now they've found something with even fewer users than IPv6 to play with!"
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Interplanetary Internet Tested In Space More

Interplanetary Internet Tested In Space

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  • Nonsense! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    This is impossible. How the hell is are interplanetary tubes supposed to work?

  • Can you hear me now? (Score:5, Funny)

    by davidwr (791652) on Friday September 12 2008, @12:38AM (#24974077) Homepage Journal

    Does VoIP work when there's no sound in space?

    Cue packet-sending spacedwelling overlord jokes in 0101, 0011, 0001, ...

  • It's the Internet, Jim (Score:5, Funny)

    by 427_ci_505 (1009677) on Friday September 12 2008, @12:40AM (#24974085)

    But not as we know it.

  • ET (Score:5, Funny)

    by Brain Damaged Bogan (1006835) on Friday September 12 2008, @12:41AM (#24974095)
    can now get harassed to make savings on his long distance calls to his home planet

    • Intergalactic Phising Expedition (Score:5, Funny)

      by plen246 (1195843) on Friday September 12 2008, @03:18AM (#24974887)

      Dear Blessed, I am writing you from Europa deeep ocean cause I halve heard you have Jen Rus heart and a sound mined.

      I am in ployed at the Banke of Europah as Estate Officer. Recently, highlee respected microbe, Sister d-R81, passed away with kno known daughter celles. Through good fortune and rewards for acts of kindeness, she gathered many microgrammes of sulfur during her blessed lyffe time. No Body has bean forward to claim her Estate for Six (6 )months she hs passed. Her Estate will be absorbed soon , with no Benefisheeary. She would have want it to be past to Sum Body to do good acts with and it will be wasteful to abzorb.

      Since your govment do not know yet of our existent, there is no risk too you. You will keep Sixty ( 6 0)per centage of sulfur that works out to 35.4 microgramms. I will collect theremainder when I have rode to yur plant on your spacecraft Galileo. My jupiter friend on Jupiter sent me that they have found this craft deliverd right to them.

      Do not bee concrnd word. I will be Benevolent dict-ator. Sulfuric economy be flourashing.

      Send yor contact lens numbers and sulfur banque code with which to strat transacshin now.

      Sincerelty,

      Royal Honnroble Emmannue^328*() 4532.4

      Banke of Europa

    • ET's finger (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      can now get harassed to make savings on his long distance calls to his home planet

      And also receive e-mails about pills that make his finger longer.

  • Lame..... (Score:2, Funny)

    by warcow105 (1173105)
    Give me subspace communication please...

  • And you thought latency was bad on Earth... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Puffy Director Pants (1242492) on Friday September 12 2008, @12:54AM (#24974181)
    Wait till you try to play World of Warcraft from MARS!

  • space pr0n (Score:5, Funny)

    by plopez (54068) on Friday September 12 2008, @12:56AM (#24974199) Journal

    can't wait for the space pr0n sites to pop up

  • /ping Mars

  • oh great (Score:2, Informative)

    by Tablizer (95088)

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  • Interplanetary Internet Tested In Space.

    Uhh, where else would they test it?

  • Hams had it in 1985 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bruce Perens (3872) * <bruce@perens.cYEATSom minus poet> on Friday September 12 2008, @01:12AM (#24974279) Homepage Journal
    Radio amateurs ran a wide area IP network over 1200 baud AX.25 half-duplex links in 1985, and wide area networks without IP before then. You could literally hear your packet being relayed from point to point. The IP software of the time (KA9Q NOS, and later on Linux) could handle the delays just fine. It wasn't the 30-minute delays of planetary communications, but certainly much slower than conventional IP networks, seconds per packet and tens of seconds for packets to be forwarded and acknowledged. Linux has had the features necessary to do this way back in the Waltje (Fred Van Kempen) networking software, before Alan Cox started working on it. Waltje was a Dutch CB packet enthusiast. Sometimes people turn that stuff on and don't realize they aren't the first ones.

    Bruce

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You could literally hear your packet being relayed from point to point.

      I am not surprised! Morse keys make a racket!

    • Funny you should mention that, but I've been writing an AX.25 convergence layer to run the DTN bundling protocol over connected mode AX.25 on Linux. It's still in testing though and seems to have some issues. Hopefully I'll get it fed upstream into the sourceforge DTN2 code-base soon. Anybody want to try it out?

    • ...inspired by the Venus Equilateral stories of George O. Smith in the 1940's: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Equilateral [wikipedia.org]

  • I can move to Mars without regrets.

  • Prior Interplanetary Art (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DynaSoar (714234) on Friday September 12 2008, @01:36AM (#24974411) Journal

    Vint Cerf may have worked on the development, but the idea was covered by Vernor Vinge in 1992 ("A Fire Upon The Deep"). Yes, it was fiction, but Vinge drew on his knowledge as a computer scientist. He also betrayed himself as having more than a passing familiarity with the pitfalls and pratfalls of usenet message threads. "Hexapodia As The Key Insight" (Thanks, Jack.)

    • Excuse me if I am repeating obvious conclusions. My only gateway onto the 'Net is very expensive, and I don't get all messages.

      I agree on the Usenet references... It was eerily accurate, and very enjoyable. Also, I liked his concept of aliens, which were actually alien, rather than most sci-fi.

      • Also, I liked his concept of aliens, which were actually alien

        And also eerily like Usenet. Have you read some the fringe posters from the late '80s? Scarier than the "Alliance for the Defense" posts in the book.

        Yah, I thought about the Net of a Million Lies when I read this /. article headline. I wonder what kind of lag you'd get playing WoW from, say Relay. I hope the realm server is in the Upper Beyond.

        (If none of this makes sense, kind reader, get the book or ignore me. Thank you.)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Agripa (139780)

          Crypto: 0
          As received by: Transceiver Relay03 at Relay
          Language path: Cloudmark -> Twiskweline, SjK units
          [Cloudmark is a High Beyond trade language. Despite colloquial rendering, only core meaning is guaranteed.]
          From: Transcendent Bafflements Trading Union at Cloud Center
          Subject: Matter of life and death
          Summary: Arbitration Arts has fallen to Straumli Perversion via a Net attack. Use Middle Beyond relays till emergency passes!
          Key phrases: Net attack, scale interstellar warfare, Straumli Perversion
          Distrib

          • I see I'm not the only fan.

            "Fire" is available as an audiobook. Handy, but it loses the effect of network traffic as compared to the print version. Reading the headers as headers gives almost a sub-plot.

  • Asshole!!! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    TFA says transmission between the earth and satellites. So, Ok, the earth is a planet (yeah, like whatever), where is the ohter planet? Did those astronmy clowns change the planet definition again?
  • in getting a/s/l:

    vulcanary 108 years old/biological male but engineered female/YU5567. XH558, Vulcan
  • Space... The final frontier, WOULD YOU LIKE A BIGGGER PENIS? CLICK HERE. No wonder why the aliens won't talk to us.
  • V 1.0 IPV4, world coverage, good speeds, Information Superhighway
    V 2.0 IPV6, much faster, light speed is the limit
    V 3.0 SSWW aka Solar System Wide Web, why run in a superhighway if you can crawl in the space?

  • What's the point? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DrBuzzo (913503) on Friday September 12 2008, @02:51AM (#24974755) Homepage
    Considering we don't have any systems to send anyone to another planet and the planetary exploration systems we have are only limited robotic probes, what exactly is the point?

    In terms of planetary travel it's actually one of the less difficult issues on the list to get communications systems working and figure out how to use systems with heavy delays. Nobody is going to be living on Mars until we have a way to get there and we're at least ten years away from a rocket that can even launch a sufficient payload.

    I'd just put this on the back burner until some of the other issues are taken care of. Even the most advanced plans for sending humans to Mars still are conceptual and no prototypes exist even.

    The Internet in near space (LEO or even the moon) does not have latency beyond what current protocols can deal with.

    • Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by John Meacham (1112) on Friday September 12 2008, @03:00AM (#24974799) Homepage

      So those limited robotic probes can communicate of course. Not having to invent a whole new protocol and being able to re-use existing sattelites for retransmission is a big win for future missions.

      • That's not really how communications in deep space work. They're done individually on a very low level because there's too many variables and circumstances to deal with by an automated protocol. For example, sometimes the signals themselves are used for scientific reasons like sending them through a planetary atmosphere to measure their absorption on their way to earth or measuring dopler shifts.

        there is no simple automated routing like on the internet. The circumstances are much different. There ar

    • The point is that the robotic probes will be accessible through the internet if you catch my drift ;)

      • So now the Mars rover's tracks will spell "PWN'D" if you look at them from high enough altitude?

    • Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Zarhan (415465) on Friday September 12 2008, @04:23AM (#24975143)

      Actually, Delay-tolerant Networking has applications that go beyond just space. One prime example is acoustic networks for oceanic monitoring - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/4302188/4302189/04302341.pdf [ieee.org] has a nice paper about the application. Also, battlefield communications where there may be intermittent connectivity benefits from DTN.

      Anyway, the reason for getting direct IP connectivity to space probes is to reduce the overhead: If you can just say wget http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/mars/opportunity/todayspic.jpg [nasa.gov] to access Oppy's camera instead of having to go through various hoops it makes everyones work easier. Combine this with dynamic and automatic routing (for example, for solar oppositions)..So yes, mostly the benefits are for scientists and engineers in space projects.

      • Oh, sure, the practical uses. I hear 'Delay-Tolerant Networking', and I think 'carrier pidgeon' [faqs.org].

      • Right said Fred. It has been used for quite a few sensornet applications where eventual delivery of data is essential. Another example could be for connectivity on highways. For example, an email app running over a DTN bundle layer could schedule bundles for future delivery while you were using your laptop in a car. You could then have geographically dispersed access points which provide intermittent connectivity to the Internet. Whenever you cross one of these access points the DTN protocol stack on your l
      • The probes and rovers do not communicate with earth using a full-fledged internet connection. It's a very specialized circumstance where the data is transmitted directly to the earth (usually at a low rate of speed) to the Deep Space Network via the S-band, X-band and recently the Ka-Band.

        The data is transmitted in bursts and has heavy error correction but it's adjustable for the circumstances. The communications is very "low level" meaning that the controlers work directly with the signals without mu

      • I attended a talk given by Vint Cerf at the local Google office (in Tempe, AZ, though it's referred to as "Google Phoenix"), and he discussed another application: text messaging between soldiers, and between soldiers and commanding officers, in battlefield conditions. The devices might not have exposure to a network all the time, so they relay messages to the next node when it becomes visible/available.

        Vint Cerf said this was already being used in the field.

        Of course, sending cheaper robotic probes out int

    • Yeah, but wouldn't it be nice not to have to wait 8 months for DSL when you move into that condo in shadow of Olympos Mons?

    • You're talking like working on a way of networking things excludes *also* working on a way to get people to Mars.

      It seems unlikely to me that the people working on this are the same set of people designing propulsion systems, and ways of sustaining life on other planets.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Weebo (1070712)
      Also, if you host your own web-server from space, you can host any kind of content you like without having to worry about the specific regulations associated with the country your server is in.

  • ... I get my .mars email address.

  • Arthur C. Clarke envisaged this problem years ago for 2001.

  • Wonder if the larger planets will charge higher for the wifi like hotels do. Stay at a 1st class hotel/space station, charge exuberant wifi prices. Stay at a Motel 6 / Planet 6 and get free wifi

  • > ping zaphod.betelgeuse.net PING zaphod.betelgeuse.net (42.42.42.42): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 42.42.42.42: icmp_seq=0 ttl=56 time=26931744000042.0 ms
  • im in ur shuttle eatin all ur potata chips

  • Nothing new here. FidoNet [wikipedia.org] has been providing latency tolerant networking since the 1980s. Just ask our friends in Cuba, they're still using something similar, but thumb drives and USB key fobs means the packet size can be well over a Gigabyte. Put that in your pipe I mean 'series of tubes', and smoke it!

  • DTN is not IP for space (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Just to clear up what seems to be a common confusion, DTN is *not* IP for space. It is a new networking stack that can work *over* IP, but fundamentally uses a store and forward architecture, and can uses other physical or transport layers. It will work with minibuses driving around rural africa, and it will allow "bundles" to be eventually delivered to probes that are in the shadow of a planet. See dtnrg.org

  • We could connect and control the aim of the camera. And the images would get sent back to Earth, etc, etc, etc.

    Then we place one one Mars...

    Fun, and we get to test this "interplanetary internet" thing...

    Doesn't seem all that hard to do...

  • Wait (Score:2)

    by lewp (95638)

    fewer users than IPv6

    Can we get confirmation on this? I'm pretty sure nothing has fewer users than IPv6.

  • This is Zogmorfix from the planet Mars speaking.

    In case you were wondering, BitTorrent has an average download rate of 1kb/decade here also.

    [MESSAGE ENDS]

  • But (Score:1)

    by Ixne (599904)

    "After Vint Cerf planned the Interplanetary Internet"

    I thought Al Gore planned the Interplanetary Internet...

Mobius strippers never show you their back side.