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Vint Cerf Talks About The "Interplanetary Internet"

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the no-intelligent-life-down-here dept.

Uncle Humph1 writes "There's an interesting article at NewsForge by Robin (Roblimo)Miller about Vint Cerf giving a presentation to NOVALUG about the Interplanetary Internet and having lunch with them afterward. An interesting read. One of the quotables by Vint with regard to security reads 'We're building in security from end to end,' he says, 'because we don't need headlines saying, '15-year-old takes over Mars.'" Here is some more information about the interplanetary Internet.

7 of 169 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Sheesh! by b1t+r0t · · Score: 3, Informative

    Of course it depends on the relative orbital positions, but I thought it was on the order of 12-20 minutes round trip time.

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    "Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
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  2. Remeber your physics... by d.valued · · Score: 4, Informative

    One of the main problems with interplanetary internetworking is the speed of light, since we would be using some form of RF for the actual transmissions. (Blinking lights works disturbingly well, as long as a line of sight is maintained, since at the frequencies of visible light, you can transmit data at more than a terabit per second.)

    Don't expect to be able to play Quake across the galactic sea, as you have mulit-minute ping times.

    In addition, Telnet seems right out.

    The most probable form of interplanetary networking, barring successful use of Bell's Theorem (it has to do with quantum physics, and it is an observed behavior that (A) two particles in contact have spins which eventually synchronize and (B) once split apart, no matter how far apart the particles are, the spins are still in perfect sync), is going to be a store-and-forward systm, like email.

    You make requests for pages, a smart terrestrial gateway will spider the links appropiately, hopefully remove the bloody ads and spyware (since one must make the probabilisticly correct assumption we're going to have windows-dependants on the receiving end)... and in about 1.1-1.5t (where t is the period of time it takes for light to get between where you are Earth and back) you get your content.

    This system makes bookmarking pages more important, since it could gather pages based on a pre-defined list (like checking out what's on CNN, BBC, Slashdot, etc. etc..)

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    1. Re:Remeber your physics... by jpmorgan · · Score: 3, Informative
      Quantum entanglement can't be used to send a signal faster than the speed of light, since there's no way to encode a message without collapsing the superpositions and breaking the entanglement.

      Sorry, try again.

    2. Re:Remeber your physics... by d.valued · · Score: 4, Informative

      Let's get past Ender's Game for a minute.

      This isn't some sci-fi, pseudo-science. This is quantum physics we're talking about here. Unless you are one of the theorists, chances are you're a parrot. I'll readily admit I don't grasp most of it, since I'm not doing it full-time and most of the QP stuff gives me migraines on a bad day.

      However, what I mentioned casually in the article (with the thirty-second explantation) is Bell's Theorem. Link provided here, here, here.

      Punch up Google, type in "Bell's Theorem", and enjoy stuff that makes your tiny little mind explode.

      --
      I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
      Real life is underrated.
    3. Re:Remeber your physics... by barawn · · Score: 3, Informative

      Unfortunately, your interpretation of Bell's Theorem is quite wrong.

      Bell's Theorem says that quantum mechanics is fundamentally right. Wave functions collapse instantaneously (barring a nonlocal hidden variable theory). That would seem to imply that we can send information faster than the speed of light, but that's not true - there's no information contained within the wavefunction itself. You can't send information. No. No chance. No way. No how. Go ahead. Try. You'll never be able to.

      "Things" travelling faster than the speed of light is not surprising. It is normal. Imagine two planets, say, 1 light year apart from each other. Now imagine you're thousands of light years away from them, perpendicular to the line joining the two planets. Now you shine a biiig flashlight on them, and wave it back and forth between the two planets. Now think about the shadow (or "lack of flashlight") - passing back and forth. Do the math - it's going to be going back and forth at several times the speed of light.

      Is this a problem? Hell no. There's no information in that "shadow". There's no way for planet A to use that shadow to transmit information to planet B (without sending it to you first, which would... well... defeat the point).

      Bell's Theorem basically says that the wavefunction is the quantum analogue of the magnetic vector potential - a quantum "shadow". Yes, it propagates faster than the speed of light. No, this isn't a problem. The EPR experiment, and others similar to it that Bell's Theorem addresses, cannot be used to send FTL messages. If they could, you'd be damned sure we'd already be doing it!

  3. At a minimum... by Big+Sean+O · · Score: 4, Informative

    At a minimum it's 0.524 AU. The maximum would be 2.524 AU (when the earth and mars are on opposite sides of the sun) which is 5 times greater than your estimate (for a whopping 21.5 minutes). Of course, good luck getting your radio signal through Sol. Perhaps we have to install some repeaters somewhere (which would make for further delays). Anybody have that Pathagorean theorem handy??

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  4. Re:Already done? by Dwonis · · Score: 3, Informative
    From net/ipv4/tcp_timer.c:

    Note that 120 sec is defined in the protocol as the maximum possible RTT. I guess we'll have to use something other than TCP to talk to the University of Mars.