Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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.

24 of 169 comments (clear)

  1. Already done? by Rainier+Wolfecastle · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well, accoring to this one documentary I saw, TCP/IP is already in use on at least one other planet.

    1. 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.

  2. Interplanetary Internet means.... by Kenja · · Score: 5, Funny

    Interplanetary Internet means intergalactic porn. The triple breasted whore of eroticon six will have her poor web server slashdoted.

    --

    "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
  3. Sheesh! by MxTxL · · Score: 4, Funny

    C:\>ping www.marsrover.co.mars

    Pinging marsrover.co.mars [68.179.57.159] with 32 bytes of data:

    Reply from 68.179.57.159: bytes=32 time=12100ms TTL=4300
    Reply from 68.179.57.159: bytes=32 time=12000ms TTL=4300
    Reply from 68.179.57.159: bytes=32 time=11000ms TTL=4300
    Reply from 68.179.57.159: bytes=32 time=12000ms TTL=4300

    Ping statistics for 68.179.57.159:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
    Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 11000ms, Maximum = 12100ms, Average = 11700ms

    Won't be playing UT with these guys anytime soon... :)

    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.

      --

      --
      "Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
      "Open source is evil." - Microsoft
    2. Re:Sheesh! by Pius+II. · · Score: 4, Interesting

      In net/ipv4/tcp_timer.c:tcp_retransmit_timer in Linux 2.3.99pre6,
      there's a comment lines 590-604 saying:
      /* Increase the timeout each time we retransmit. Note that
      * we do not increase the rtt estimate. rto is initialized
      * from rtt, but increases here. Jacobson (SIGCOMM 88) suggests
      * that doubling rto each time is the least we can get away with.
      * In KA9Q, Karn uses this for the first few times, and then
      * goes to quadratic. netBSD doubles, but only goes up to *64,
      * and clamps at 1 to 64 sec afterwards. 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.
      *
      * PAWS allows us longer timeouts and large windows, so once
      * implemented ftp to mars will work nicely. We will have to fix
      * the 120 second clamps though!
      */

      Found on http://www.wcug.wwu.edu/lists/netdev/200005/msg000 34.html

      The guy in the post proposes a 240 second clamp as upper limit, but I guess that wouldn't really help with this special problem... :-)

    3. Re:Sheesh! by moosesocks · · Score: 3, Funny

      The scary part of that is that I've had worse pings than that on terrestrial servers on my 56k.

      --
      -- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
  4. *sob* Willis gets fired. by jukal · · Score: 3, Funny

    Now we can just /. all the approaching asteroids.

  5. Built-in security by fireboy1919 · · Score: 4, Funny

    You think the lag time to third world countries is bad? Try third world PLANETS.

    Whenever I play quake against guys from Mars, its always the same: they just stand there, and I frag 'em. They must have a latency of several minutes, at least! Other planets are even worse. I once waited all night just to download a 1k faq on Plutonian mining operations, and I can't even COUNT how many connections I've lost completely with servers on Jupiter.

    Who could hack those anyway? Of course, it would take forever. Plus, as we all know (having seen Independence Day), servers in space run MacOS (otherwise how would the guy have easily uploaded a virus with his iMAC), which is a bit difficult to hack anyway.

    I don't think they have anything to worry about. Except Uranus. I hear they're using unpatched IIS servers there.

    --
    Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
  6. 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..)

    --
    I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
    Real life is underrated.
    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!

  7. Not really the interplanetary internet by Rupert · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is more a mechanism to get a packet to pay its own way across a network. You can see why Worldcom, and its employee, Mr. Cerf, would be interested in this.

    For all he invented the internet, Vint, whether making proposals of this kind or wielding a knife in the draughty halls of ICANN, shows no signs of putting its well-being over that of his employer.

    --

    --
    E_NOSIG
  8. Re:Subspace Ethernet by shess · · Score: 3, Insightful

    it'd take the Earth 8.5 minutes to find out and start heading for interstellar space.

    If the sun teleported elsewhere, Earth would be in interstellar space instantaneously!

  9. ET by moosesocks · · Score: 3, Funny

    ET Ping Home. ET Ping Home.

    --
    -- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
  10. Will the Interplanetary Net support . . . by StefanJ · · Score: 3, Funny

    . . . the MIME types suggested in RFC1437?

    http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1437.html

  11. FTL Communications by sam_handelman · · Score: 5, Funny

    FTL Travel is probably never going to be a reality - meaning all those green alien women will just have to pine away for Captain K's hot man love.

    However, FTL Communications are probably possible, so we can hope that our overweight, velour wearing descendents might at least talk dirty with some green alien women.

    Of course, based on today's internet, those green alien women would probably be fat, balding green alien men and green alien FBI agents on green alien sting missions against the sexually deviant human race.

    Unfortunately, this proposed FTL method requires you to ship the quantum-coupled-er...thingies from place to place FIRST, which means we'd have to exchange ambassadors with the green aliens FIRST... meaning Captain K is back in the shag house, big time.

    And then, the quantum communications might be a bit, well, odd, as you might recieve cryptic messages like this:

    Reply from 68.179.57.159: qubits = 256 95% confidence -11fs<time<-4fs, measured from point of transmission, 95% confidence -14fs<time<-6fs, measured from point of reception.

    Which is a reply to the following command:

    Pinging hotbabes.co.vulcan [68.179.57.159] with 256 qubits of data.

    Which you had not yet actually run. Anyone want to suggest changes to TCP/IP that would allow you to handle when acks arrived before the message they acknowledge has been sent? Just asking.

    --
    The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
    1. Re:FTL Communications by cperciva · · Score: 3, Funny

      Anyone want to suggest changes to TCP/IP that would allow you to handle when acks arrived before the message they acknowledge has been sent? Just asking.

      Sure: If you receive an ACK to a packet you haven't sent, put it into a buffer. Each time you're about to send a packet, check to see if you've already received an ACK for it. If you have, adjust the window as apppropriate and don't send the packet.

      --
      Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
    2. Re:FTL Communications by Dreamweaver · · Score: 5, Funny

      If you have, adjust the window as appropriate and don't send the packet

      Naughty, naughty. Still need to send the packet or you generate a causality loop. You already received the response for the packet you're about to send, you see. If you don't send it, then what was the response to?

      It's bad enough having inexperienced coders leaving memory leaks and infinite loops lying around; now we'll have reality leaks and causal loops to watch out for, too. "Woops, I forgot a semicolon and now French people speak German..."

      --


      "If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
  12. The Poor Pigeons! by tarsi210 · · Score: 4, Funny

    I guess the birds will need tiny spacesuits and rocket packs to make it back and forth.

    Incoming interstellar hen!

    --
    Blog,Twitter
  13. Re:News: RIAA invades Alpha Centuri over fileshari by _ph1ux_ · · Score: 3, Funny

    the tighter they grip - the more interplanetary internet warez sites will slip through their fingers.

  14. 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??

    --
    My father is a blogger.
  15. Re:Two small, minor issues by krokodil · · Score: 4, Insightful
    1. There are no people on Mars yet. We haven't figured out how to get them there (in terms of ensuring their health and safety; in terms of how we're going to bring them back; in terms of financing the project). There's no timetable for sending people to Mars, so one can neither say "we'd better prepare for this" nor "we're nowhere near needing to prepare for this."

    Before sending people we will send bots. And to download information from bots TCP/IP may be good choice.