The Interplanetary Internet

Roland Piquepaille writes "This article from SPACE.com about the Interplanetary Internet (IPN) is not science fiction. It is becoming a reality, Rich Gray reports. "The IPN would form a backbone connecting a series of hubs on or around planets, ships, and at other points in space. These hubs would provide high-capacity, high-availability Internet traffic over distances that could stretch up to hundreds of millions of miles." Gray adds that all the planets and satellites in our solar system have already Internet addresses and that NASA is already communicating with its earth-orbiting missions through its internal Deep Space Network. The rest of us will have to wait until at least 2005 when IPN-equipped satellites are launched. Check this column for more details. You also can read a previous Slashdot column on the same subject. "

Comments

think of the gamers man!

[pilybaby]

I think the lag when playing HL2 with someone on Mars would be too much to take.

Re:think of the gamers man!

[arvindn]

Yes, games are out, the round trip time being more half an hour to Mars. On a slightly more practical note, instant messaging won't be fun either.

And the optimal packet size will probably be of the order of gigabytes!

We'll need protocols that absolutely minimize the number of rounds over all other considerations.

And I wonder if your downloads will be slightly slower or faster depending on the red shift or blue shift of the server :-)

Re:think of the gamers man!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, with the sort of timescales we're talking about here, you'd probably be playing Duke Nukem Forever.

I have to ask...

[Anonymous Coward]

all the planets and satellites in our solar system have already Internet addresses

So, whats the internet address for Uranus? http://ipn.myhomepage.ass ? or, .anus?

GREAT

[Evil Adrian]

That's all we need, is some fifteen-year-old DDoS-ing the Hubble.

Squatters

[Steve1952]

Bad news! Most of the planetary sites are occupied by squatters. For example, some snack food company is sitting on mars.com...

I've Said It Before And I'll Say It Again...

[PipianJ]

[luser@somebox luser]$ ping -c 4 www.pathfinder.mars

Pinging www.pathfinder.mars [178.223.52.43] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 178.223.52.43: bytes=32 time=2678674ms TTL=53
Reply from 178.223.52.43: bytes=32 time=2679146ms TTL=53
Reply from 178.223.52.43: bytes=32 time=2678608ms TTL=53
Reply from 178.223.52.43: bytes=32 time=2679568ms TTL=53

Ping statistics for 178.223.52.43:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 60ms, Maximum = 183ms, Average = 114ms

That's nearly 44 minutes round trip for light, and that's only to Mars at opposition. Imagine how long it is to Pluto at opposition. What is it that they say? It was 20-30 hours round-trip to contact Pioneer 10?

More info on the JPL site

[ControlFreal]

This is actually a long-term project which, in 2015 (probably 2030 in reality ;) boasts a downlink of several Tbits per day to earth.

Check out the info here.

Interplanetary chat rooms: patience required!

[HarveyBirdman]

[BigDuud has entered chat room #marssex]

BigDuud: Anyone here?
(20 minutes pass)
BarsoomGirl: Just me it seems.
(20 minutes pass)
BigDuud: Wassup! I'm at Tycho City, Moon. Where you at?
(20 minutes pass)
BarsoomGirl: Utopia Planita base, Mars.
(20 minutes pass)
BigDuud: Cool! Are you nekkid?
(20 minutes pass)
BarsoomGirl: Yes, but only under my spacesuit.
(20 minutes pass)
BigDuud: Bummer.
(20 minutes pass)
BarsoomGirl: Yeah. We had a failure in the Windows2150 installation, and it caused a pressure imbalance that blew out the mail seals. I was in the shower when it happened. I'm all wet and soapy in here.
(20 minutes pass)
BigDuud: How long before it's fixed?
(20 minutes pass)
BarsoomGirl: Who knows? They admins are downloading the patch from the Redmond Arcology, but it's suposedly 50 billion terabytes for the copyright notice alone.
(20 minutes pass)
BigDuud: Bummer.
(20 minutes pass)
BarsoomGirl: This suit has a seismic vibrator, though. ;-)
(20 minutes pass)
BigDuud: Wicked! So, do you have big barsooms?

[Connection terminated. Link eclipsed by Phobos.]

Lots of Great uses

[flogger]

For science. Look at our data recording of various solar bodies. We have to send up a satelite to orbit the planet, say Neptune. This satelite takes its readings and can only report back to earth when there is direct lne of site. With Neptune, this doesn't happen that often. If there were a "hub" system of Interplanetary TCP/IP set up, this satelite on Neptune could send the info via Jupiter --> Mars --> Venus -->Earth.
Now once these hubs are set up, Communications would not rely on Line of site; interplanetory travel could "talk" with mission control from anywhere on the journey.
Some Sci-Fi:

• Traverse 12:Mission Control, Commander Meichiko just gave birth to a fine son, Akira. ... There were some complications. Meickiko's Uterus ruptures when the placenta detatched. She's now stable. What do you reccomend?
• Mission Control: Traverse 12. We read you. Congradulations. We are sending you the data from Commanders Meichiko's Reproductive files. From this you should be able to print out a new uterus on your HP BioJet 9800.

Re:Hm.

[clarkcox3]

They'll just have to rely on NAT like the rest of us do.

That actually makes a lot of sense, have a huge router per planet, with NAT, that batches the outgoing TCP/IP packets into large (i.e. multi-gigabyte) packets, which are split back into their TCP/IP packets at the receiving end on some other planet. That way, the effects of latencies measured in hours on the actual throughput could be minimized.

internet?

[kipsate]

It is nice that NASA is developing a communication protocol for use in their missions. It seems to have some advantages: only low-power transmitters are needed on space crafts if you have a retransmitting satellite hub around. (This is in fact done already - in missions that use a lander, the part of the ship that stays in orbit retransmit signals of the lander). Using a standardized protocol, the hubs can be used for many missions, even simultaneously.

I wish the article on space.com had focussed on this a bit more instead of popularising it by mentioning Vint Cerf and the Internet. Everyone will realize that the infrastructure is not connected to the Internet (imagine - hacked satellite, DoS attacks). Also, the protocol, which can handle large delays, will have significant differences to regular TCP/IP.

Also, I'd like to know how to NASA will solve a few problems that jump to mind. The communication hubs are only useful if they are close to the sending spacecraft. The hubs can not be put halfway earth and a planet, because of the planets rotation around the sun. So the hub would have to circle around a planet in order for future missions to that particular planet can use it.

But then NASA faces the following problems: on planets with an atmosphere, the hubs will tend to fall to the surface, so in many cases they need fuel to keep their altitude.

Secondly, the hub will only be visible from one side of the planet at the time.

Thirdly, the hub needs power, where to get it from for an extended period of time? Or are the hubs only short lived? In that case, why bother at all?