Vint Cerf's Disruption-Tolerant Networking

An anonymous reader writes "Net pioneer, Vint Cerf, talked this week about the space internet (the Interplanetary Internet), and an interesting 1994 April Fool's email he penned as a Request for Comment [1607]. The thread involves a reverse time capsule from the year 2023, but covers Cerf's side interests in Shakespeare. Since 2004 marks the 30th anniversary of publication of the first paper on the Internet, his views on the future of the net and Interplanetary Internet seem to have morphed somewhat into delay and disruption tolerant networking because of high demand for videoconferencing, Voice-Over IP, and multimedia."

Comments

Critical apps given false sense of security?

[MacFury]

A disruption tolerant internet would be great...but at what point do we allow critical applications to communicate over such a system? In reference to a recent article on VoIP 911 service...I wouldn't trust that critcal line of communication if it failed as often as my DSL connection.

Who is Half Handsome?

Re:Critical apps given false sense of security?

[LostCluster]

It's a case of matching the network technology to the application. It's the reason why we have both TCP (for when it needs to get there uncorrupted) and UDP (for when any packet that's late is now of no use) available for use under IP.

There's a big difference between a 911 call on Earth, and getting data back from Mars. Those two networks should likely have very little in common.