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

Internet == disruption

[pestie]

Now if only someone can find a way to keep the internet from disrupting my productivity at work...

Re:Internet == disruption

[Gherald]

> Now if only someone can find a way to keep the internet from disrupting my productivity at work...

Just hook in a second monitor and code a little script that starts at google news and clicks a random link every twenty seconds...

Send the comm network before sending the humans?

[LostCluster]

This brings up an interesting step in the path towards trying to settle Mars... would it be a smart idea to have communciations satellites orbiting Mars before we send the first humans?

Having the already-in-space assets so that reliable Earth-to-Mars links can be established could be very useful to the first manned missions, especially so we could avoid losing contact in the situations where they'd otherwise have to transmit through the planet to get back to earth.

Imagine having all of Mars already be a wireless Internet hotspot before we get there...

Disruption/delay tolerant networking...

[Bobdoer]

...is all nice and fine, but disruption/delay tolerant people, those are a rarity.

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.

Re:Critical apps given false sense of security?

[LostCluster]

The great failing of DSL is that it works great for those close to the CO point, but it's useless to those too far away. It's a true feast or famine situation.

Re:Critical apps given false sense of security?

[segment]

failure on your DSL either means a) nosync caused by static on your lines meaning either your wiring is bad or the telco sucks, in either case the line can be adjusted and the noise level brought down. Unless of course your provider is using ghetto DSLAMS, b) your modem or eth cards are garbage or c) you're using shoddy wiring (rj45's phone cords, etc.) or shoddy splitters, or have some crazy ass fax/phone/^* set up that's give you linenoise. Heck housealarms can do that, so can vibrations on the line if you live near like a train or something.

Just because it could be one of the choices though does not mean VoIP is a bad idea, as far as the entire VoIP 9/11 argument, I see it as being useless considering even 11 year olds have cell phones. Don't tell me you're like one of those people in a horror movie, where they fall and stay on the ground screaming. Pick up another line of communication. Think of it in terms of everyday normality, you catch a flat, there's a spare, etc.

As for disruption tolerant, it would be literally impossible. That's asking for a vendor to create the ultmite failsafe product. Anything can happen, sadly look at 9/11 for example. To ask for something perfect would be to ask for the impossible, to not have a failover implementation of sorts is mere stupidity, and should not be blamed on technology whatsoever. Hell if I were trapped in the desert with no phone, etc., bet your ass I'm trying to make some smoke signals.

Re:Send the comm network before sending the humans

[mattjb0010]

This brings up an interesting step in the path towards trying to settle Mars... would it be a smart idea to have communciations satellites orbiting Mars before we send the first humans?

The current set of satellites provide communication links between the landers and Earth.

Re:Send the comm network before sending the humans

[ColaMan]

Nah, ya just kick a comms satellite out the door as your landing vehicle goes past aerosynchronous orbit.

hehehe

[Anonymous Coward]

January, 14, 2024:

linux 15.28

subroot@uberbox.com# ping -f www.mars.mr

http://www.slashdot.org:
January, 17, 2004 18:06 GMT

Mars Gets first DDOS

An anonymous reader writes, "It appears a group of hackers have successfully performed the first denial of service attack against Mars, taking the interplanetary internet down for several hours today. The hackers managed to mask their IPv8 addresses by rerouting through several interplanetary sublinks that initially showed them originating approxmatley 600,000 miles away from earth in the middle of space." Update 20:24GMT Yeah its a dupe again! We ran a story on this for three days in a row. It was originally posted here, here and here.

Re:delay or disruption?

[krumms]

Maybe there's specific definitions that I'm not aware of, but to me it seems that a long delay could be considered to be a disruption (TCP connection time out, for example).

I dunno. Maybe I suck. :)

IPv8 problem

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

It was originally posted here, here and here.

I guess IPv8 links are too advanced to render in my browser.

Re:IPv8 problem

[222]

Its obviously a hoax, ipv4 is going to carry us well into the 23rd century :)

Some articles about DTN

[Magus311X]

Some interesting articles about DTN that were made available on the IPNSIG (Interplanetary Network Special Interest Group) site:

DTN Tutorial (PDF)

DTN Architecture: The Evolving Interplantary Internet (TXT)

DTN for Extreme Environments (PDF)

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Re:Send the comm network before sending the humans

[kfg]

Great idea! Unfortunately, such robots don't exist.

Just as human carrying Mars landers don't yet exist. I believe the idea is to think up things that don't exist yet, and then build them.

I think Mr. Cerf himself has some experience with that particular protocol.

KFG

Re:Send the comm network before sending the humans

[QuantumFTL]

This brings up an interesting step in the path towards trying to settle Mars... would it be a smart idea to have communciations satellites orbiting Mars before we send the first humans?

The current set of satellites provide communication links between the landers and Earth.

Yes, however it's clear that the limited bandwidth provided by those satalites is not nearly as much as one would wish for an entire human settlement to have to share.

Also it would be smart to have 100% dedicated communications satallites so that there would be less chance of something unrelated to communications causing a problem on the satallite.

Don't get me wrong, the satallites have been great (I work on MER) however we still have to throw away observations due to bandwidth constraint, and we have to wait quite a bit to get data back, on the order of several hours... not an ideal situation!

Maybe a few optical links with a radio backup would do the trick.

Cheers,
Justin

Rocks - Disruption proofing for TCP

[DrSkwid]

This is an excellent user land TCP application that automatically re-connects to dropped TCP connections, even if the IP addresses change.

http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~zandy/rocks

There is also an in-depth paper by the authors.

Rocks protect sockets-based applications from network failures, particularly failures common to mobile computing, including:

* Link failures (e.g., unexpected modem disconnection);
* IP address changes (e.g., laptop movement, DHCP lease expiry);
* Extended periods of disconnection (e.g., laptop suspension).

Rock-enabled programs continue to run after any of these events; their broken connections recover automatically, without loss of in-flight data, when connectivity returns. Rocks work transparently with most applications, including SSH clients, X-windows applications, and network service daemons.

bah, slashcode breaks the title attribute in hrefs and co-opts it for it's own use, bad programming.

It is helpful to blind readers and page indexers esp. if the label text is something like 'click here' to provide some information on the content of the link. grr sometimes I gets so mads

Re:Send the comm network before sending the humans

[Helvick]

Certainly an interesting idea

That's probably why NASA already have the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter scheduled for launch in 2009. This is still being spec'ed out but optical links, which are currently described as testing\Proof of concept and primary Ka-Band capabilities (once proven in MRO below) are both in plan right now.

Next year's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has significantly better telecoms relaying capability than the existing Odyssey\MGS orbiters - 6Mbits/sec using Ka-band. This goes with some major upgrades to the DSN as this currently has 10Mbit/sec limitations for telecoms at Mars distances AFAIK. This JPL presentation has lots of detail on the near term\medium term plans and proposals and where the IPN fits in. This indicates that the bandwidth of optical links to mars would be in the 30-300Mbps range.

Wizzy Digital Courier - High latency network

[andyr]

Folks,

We have an Internet-content delivery system that works in a high-latency environment, to deliver mail and web content to South African schools.

http://wizzy.org.za/

The problem it is designed to overcome is the high cost of local telephone calls in a monopoly wireline provider regulatory environment.

We use cheap-rate overnight phone calls and a UUCP delivery system in conjunction with a local mailserver and wwwoffle web cache.

UUCP can also be used via a USB memory stick, similar to the DataMule (pdf) paper referenced on the website. Carrying the memory stick (the Courier) is identical to one UUCP hop.

The website gives more information.

Cheers, Andy!