US Air Force Building Space Router

Saint Aardvark writes "From the ISTS daily news comes a story on the US Air Force seeking to build a space router. From TFA: "Northrop Grumman and Caspian Networks are collaborating to develop an Internet Protocol router that can withstand the constant barrage of solar radiation in orbit. The space-hardened IP router will be part of the Air Force's Transformational Satellite Communications System, which will provide IP-based communications to warfighters." I wonder what the ping times would be like..."

Comments

Ping Times

[ackthpt]

"I wonder what the ping times would be like..."

They could tell you, but then they'd have to kill you.

News to Look Forward To:

Air Force Get Signal - 'CATS: AYBABTU' Spend $$$,$$$,$$$'s researching origin

TSAT 0wn3d

Alan Ralsky sentenced to Abu Ghraib for routing spam through TSAT

TSAT loses orbit, crushes Tom Cruise on eve of War Of The Worlds opening

Mischevious Glac-Elves use TSAT to spread Irata Worm

Air Force officer notices TSAT looks canoe-shaped before realizing contract made with wrong Grumman

Warfighters welcome their new Space Routing Overlord

Re:Ping Times

[Smidge204]

The ping time would probably be pretty good, considering I can ping servers all over the planet with good response and that almost invariably takes the data through at least one satellite somewhere... so it would be the same except it would be DEDICATED traffic instead of shared with a bunch of spam and porn!
=Smidge=

Re:Ping Times

[ackthpt]

The ping time would probably be pretty good, considering I can ping servers all over the planet with good response and that almost invariably takes the data through at least one satellite somewhere... so it would be the same except it would be DEDICATED traffic instead of shared with a bunch of spam and porn!

I left out 'Amature Radio Operators bounce signals off TSAT - FCC Suspends Amature Radio'

Honestly, I'm wondering how long before they give all the frequencies to mobile communications providers and tell us to just use a damn cellphone.

Re:Ping Times

[chadjg]

I could actually respect a spammer that had the "guts" to route their spam through a server owned by a group that could unload a platoon of M1A2s on his front lawn and permanently crush everything in sight in about 2 seconds.

Please God... Thou has made me bald and without charm. Pleae give this one thing.

Re:Ping Times

[CrankyFool]

Thankfully, that would be the army. The Air Force does not have a significant offensive ground component.

On the other hand, they do have nukes :)

Re:Ping Times

[Rei]

I'm surprised they're using IP. At least, IPv4 is rather insecure; I don't know too much about IPv6. Are they using static arp entries? Otherwise, they'll be seriously vulnerable to arp hijacking, DoS, etc. I'd be interested in the details of how they plan to get such a system to work.

Re:Ping Times

[ackthpt]

I could actually respect a spammer that had the "guts" to route their spam through a server owned by a group that could unload a platoon of M1A2s on his front lawn and permanently crush everything in sight in about 2 seconds.

Spammers don't have 'guts' or even courage, they have audacity and chutzpah. If they thought they could get away with it and it could be used to send pecker pill offers to Air Force pilots, they'd be all over that.

Re:Ping Times

[Anonymous Coward]

"I wonder what the ping times would be like..."

If they are anything like regular satellite internet, they will be kinda long. In my experience supporting DirecWay satellite, ping times tended to be arround half a second on a good day.

The signal does have to go several miles up and then back down before it can even hit the net.

Re:Ping Times

[AviLazar]

And after the mass destruction they realize that the spam box was a zombie of some poor 80 year old woman's computer.

Sides, platoon of M1A2's is so resource intensive and requires sending our boys to someone's lawn... lets use precision guided missiles.

Re:Ping Times

[RealityMogul]

You're pings are not being routed through a satellite.

Re:Ping Times

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget that, the Air Force needs to include a absurdly overpowered comm-laser on this satelite for cases like that.

Now that would be a real Ping of Doom.

Re:Ping Times

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, you came up with the better words, and no doubt you're right about the p-pills.

chadjg

Re:Ping Times

[TheGavster]

How do you propose DoS'ing someone on an independant network based on vulnerabilities in their network protocol?

Re:Ping Times

[Anonymous Coward]

But I would assess the Air Force doesn't have many "warfighters" so the Army would probably be using the Air Force in this respect. Plus the Army doesn't have satelites, they use other service's equipment.

Re:Ping Times

[Anonymous Coward]

I hopefully doubt they will have these satelites handling internet traffic, hopefully, hopefully it will be some network without "hopefully" a physical connection to the internet, i.e. jwics, siprnet.

At least I hope those networks don't connect through the internet.

Re:Ping Times

[amorsen]

The ping time would probably be pretty good, considering I can ping servers all over the planet with good response and that almost invariably takes the data through at least one satellite somewhere...

Unless you're sitting at a very out-of-the-way spot, your traffic to servers over most of the planet does not go through a satellite. Satellites are pretty much out of the the internet business. The latency is simply too long for geostationary satellites, and LEO satellites either need fancy rotating antennas on the ground stations or provide lousy bandwidth. Iridium gives you 2400bps. Yay.

You can easily check for yourself with traceroute. If a hop costs you more than 240ms, it's probably a satellite. I tried testing the link to Greenland, but Tele Greenland seems to block traceroute (both icmp and udp).

Re:Ping Times

[codegen]

Looking at the article they don't actually say that it is in GeoSync orbit. So if there is a constellation of them in LEO (or just above LEO), then ping times will not be too bad, but given that:

1. more than one bird would be in view (to ensure coverage)
2. average vis time for a single sat will be on the order of minutes

means that the ground station's routing tables are going to change. Since it is not public access, I wonder if they will run opsf :-) ?

Re:Ping Times

[Deinhard]

Air Force pilots don't need pecker pills. Most that I've known are Big Dicks anyway.

Re:Ping Times

[Rei]

It's communicating with fighters; I'd hardly call that "independent". If it's using IPv4 and doesn't use a static MAC address table, you can arp a who-has packet to intercept all traffic going to a particular MAC addr. Here's a page on how to do it.

Re:Ping Times

[amorsen]

Are they using static arp entries? Otherwise, they'll be seriously vulnerable to arp hijacking, DoS, etc.

First of all, arp is only used on LANs. I seriously doubt that the router will be 802.11b-compatible. Point-to-point protocols have no need for arp. Second, let us for a moment assume that the router does use 802.11b or something similar. Then static arp entries protect against all the people who know how to send fake arp packets, but who don't know how to change their MAC address. I think you're just about the only person in that group.

Re:Ping Times

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, the Satellite pings YOU!

Re:Ping Times

[kd5ujz]

I seriously doubt TCP/IP transmitted from the ground station, to the satellite.
This will almost defiantly be encrypted and encapsulated on the ground, and the same at the satellite for the downlink. Although I do not see the need in this, unless they are going to build a constellation of router satellites, and relay from ground to sat, sat to ground, and also sat to sat.
If not relaying sat to sat, I see no need for the on board router, as this would just be a repeater that the ground based receivers could pass on to a ground based router.

Re:Ping Times

[NoMercy]

Almost totally wrong, the chances of your data going though a satelite on a normal day are pretty low, unless you have satelite internet access.

There are two options to the location of a space-router, one is a geo-stationary orbit, this would take it to 36,000 km, so a round-trip for the signal of 72 milion meters and a 'lag' of 240ms just in getting there and back (slightly longer since you don't want to send/recieve from the same palce).

The other choice is that if the system works they opt for a selection of fast-orbiting satelites which won't stay over the same spot and instead work 'shifts' over the diferent parts of the globe, these satelites could orbit at significantly lower orbits, the lowest being 320km, which would only incur a latency of just over 1ms (to a station directly below).

Most commercial satelites tend to opt for the geostationary, Iridium is the only one I can think of which has enough satelites to cover the world at a relatively low orbit around 750km I believe, 66 satelites that takes, lower would need more due to the curvature of the earth.

Re:Ping Times

[Anonymous Coward]

You're mispeelings are not being added threw a sattelite

Re:Ping Times

[lack1uster]

How did this simpsons reference get modded offtopic? Some geeks you guys are ....

Re:Ping Times

[Nautica]

Not true, Global internet traffic is usually routed through the fiber ran under the ocean.

Re:Ping Times

[ipmcc]

The ping time would probably be pretty good, considering I can ping servers all over the planet with good response and that almost invariably takes the data through at least one satellite somewhere... so it would be the same except it would be DEDICATED traffic instead of shared with a bunch of spam and porn!

Ummm, not really.

In the best case, you're near the equator:

Geosynchronous orbit ~ 35,786,000m above sea level
Speed of light: 299,792,458 m/s
Travel time to sat: ~.12s
Travel time up and back: ~.25s

Real world ping times on sat based IP connections rarely break 500ms.

There is very little commodity internet traffic going through satellites. Hooray for fiber.

Re:Ping Times

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it be smarter to use something like this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3576594. stm in the designs?

Re:Ping Times

[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing the whole point. This is not going to be connected to the internet. It will be on a private network.

Re:Ping Times

[jeremycx]

A satelite hop is ~ 300ms. That's the time it takes to get to geosync and back. (double that to 600ms if you are pinging and the response seend to com back over the same connection). No getting around that.

So, unless you call 600+ ms "good response", you're probably not going through a satellite hop.

Satellite bandwidth is expensive (and fairly rare). You couldn't put 1% of global internet traffic over satellite without running out of satellites.

Satellite is good, if you have no other option due to geographic isolation, however.

Re:Ping Times

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh.... if that satellite networks users ping it will go through the sat. It's using IP, which ICMP rides on.

Re:Ping Times

[Rei]

You're missing the point. If it is communicating with fighters, the transmissions are passing through open air. I'm not talking about some random person on the net hijacking a fighter; I'm talking about someone broadcasting arp packets to the satellite to DoS communications to fighters. Undoubtedly they've done something to stop this; however, I know not what.

I suppose it could still be IP and have a compeletely different underlying transport layer. I didn't even think of that initially. :)

Re:Ping Times

[sconeu]

Google for "Lloyd Wood". He's done a lot of the work in satellite routing algorithms.

Re:Ping Times

[bjk002]

Wouldn' it be smarter to design something along the lines of: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3576594. stm/

Re:Ping Times

[Rei]

> who don't know how to change their MAC address

All that gets you is a race condition at best, not complete DoS. But yes, it's a good point that they could be using any sort of underlying transport layer; I was stuck thinking of your conventional ethernet frame carrying the IP packets.

Re:Ping Times

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Actually they do have the A-10 Warthog. It's the first (and thusfar only) fixed wing aircraft the US inventory that was designed primarily for ground assault.

What building could say "no" to a 30mm gatling gun firing at 3900 rounds per minute?

Re:Ping Times

[Anonymous Coward]

A spammer??? I say we dust off, and nuke the
site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Re:Ping Times

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, you're right. You're so smart! I bet the Air Force never thought of that!

Re:Ping Times

[workman161]

I'm using direcway internet from DirecTv, and the ping times aren't that noticable. But they are in the 1000's, so online gaming is out of the question.

Re:Ping Times

[capnal]

I work for a corporation that uses a satellite for data communications.

As of five minutes ago, I did a ping test from my computer on our WAN, through the AMERICOM-4 satellite, to a location connected to a VSAT dish.

PING RESULTS:

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 1412ms
Maximum = 2013ms
Average = 1682ms

Looking further into it using a tracert, I have the following results (IPs/Hosts removed):

(less than signs should be infront of each 10 ms entry)
1 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms LAN/WAN
2 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms LAN/WAN
3 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms LAN/WAN
4 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms LAN/WAN
5 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms LAN/WAN
6 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms LAN/WAN
7 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms Sat Hub
8 1482 ms 1392 ms 1442 ms VSAT Host

As you can see from the numbers above the ping times would be like 1.5 seconds!!

Re:Ping Times

[Anonymous Coward]

If one uses Starband of Direcway, a latency of approximately 600ms to 1000ms is common. I do not believe this will be much different. Afterall, we are limited by the distance of the communication, and the environmentals that may degrade the satellite signal from the ground stations.

Re:Ping Times

[kup3rt1n0]

A normal satellite shot will result in approx 500ms ping times. I would imagine that this would be no different.

Re:Ping Times

[PLC_Pete]

Unless you've tried BTOpenwoe's satellite broadband, then you're luck if you ever get a response...

Re:Ping Times

[Various Assortments]

Four little words:

AU THEN TIC ATION.

heard of it?

Re:Ping Times

[Rei]

... Which Really Doesn't Exist On IPoE

Do you know how your computer "authenticates" itself to your hub/switch in determining whether you ever get anything that was sent to you, or whether someone else does? Unless they use a static mac address table (like I mentioned in the initial post), it is simply a "I take your word" situation.

Re:Ping Times

[einhverfr]

You're missing the whole point. This is not going to be connected to the internet. It will be on a private network.

Exactly. The only way to DOS it will be using RF jamming techniques.

The issue of Mac Addresses is that you have to know the transmission protocol to route to it.

Re:Ping Times

[ReeprFlame]

THat is because cell phones suck, do not use satellites, and in relation, are unreliable as satelites, military radio, amateur radio, etc...

Re:Ping Times

[Anonymous Coward]

I know the original was a humor post but here is some info to consider:

The speed of light and position of a geo-synchronous sat make it impossible to achive anything less than ~500ms. It takes time to get up to space and back, even for light.

The SPACEWAY system developed by Hughes Network Systems is ALREADY a router (switch really) in the sky. However, DirecTV group is going to get the first two spacecraft to use for DirecTV and not SPACEWAY. So it will be a little longer before SPACEWAY is available. NOTE: I don't fault the decision to use the satellites this way, it makes very good business sense for DirecTV.

DISCLAIMER: I work for HNS and all information I have listed is public knowledge, not proprietary. Even so, I'm not going to list my user ID for this.

Re:Ping Times

[Anonymous Coward]

The absolute BEST times can never be shorter then the length of time light travels 45,000 miles.

Satellite SUCKS if you have a lot of "back and forth" transactions. Sometimes a claimed broadband provider promises 1 mb on the download, but in actuality, it's not that much faster then 56kb EXCEPT for downloads with fatter packet sizes.

Re:Ping Times

[SySOvErRiDe]

I envision the day where war machines fight in the great expanse of space, and sporadic periods of peace for which enemies stop to say to each other, 'Lag...'

Re:Ping Times

[Various Assortments]

Do you know anything? Ever heard of layers? sheesh, i'm not running a network education course, i was trying to spur you into thinking in the right direction. Sorry i wasted my time.

Re:Ping Times

[nyekulturniy]

The Air Force also has RED HORSE civil engineering units that put together a house in hours... or take it apart.

Re:Ping Times

[Spock the Baptist]

Just who is they?

Your grammatical construction is such, that 'they' is ambiguous.

Re:Ping Times

[sr180]

I could actually respect a spammer that had the "guts" to route their spam through a server owned by a group that could unload a platoon of M1A2s on his front lawn and permanently crush everything in sight in about 2 seconds.

Back in the earlier days of the world wide web, If you wanted to send a friend a million or so emails to jam up his 14.4bbs connection, you simply used a US Military Mail Server as they almost all allowed mail relaying.

I have no doubt that even now, spam is being sent from Spyware-Owned Windows Boxes under the control of the US Military...

Re:Ping Times

[ThaReetLad]

Well I guess that's one way to stop you playing counterstrike at work.

Re:Ping Times

[capnal]

lol. Actually, Valve/Vivendi stopped me from playing Counter-strike by moving to Steam and double-printing CD Keys. Such a rip-off...

Re:Ping Times

[Rei]

Then perhaps I should educate you: Layers Are Completely Irrelevant If You Never See Any Packets To Begin With. Why is this hard for you to understand?

You can't "layer arp". If the hub never sends you any packets because it thinks that you're someone that you aren't, you never get any packets. It doesn't matter what layers are in those packets - you *never get them*.

Re:Ping Times

[jotok]

Yeah, and have everyone walking around with little minature radios, which they think are phones.

The spectrum is getting tighter and tighter as we trade off the utility of public radio bandwidth (search and rescue, emergency, etc.) for stuff that actually generates revenue for people. Just another example of government agencies being more concerned with money than with something that is actually useful/helpful.

73's, jotok

Re:Ping Times

[Coffeesloth]

This is true, but the RED HORSE units do not deal with demolitions...just heavy machinery.

And while I'm sure they could get the job done with the equipment they still have to find a landing strip to unload the C-5's, C-17's, and C-130's. Much as I am loathe to admit it they just can't compete with a helicopter assault for speed.

Oh, and the A-10 is a nice idea and highly maneuverable but even it can't compete with something that can hover.

(USAF, Ret.)

Re:Ping Times

[MintyGreen]

Reading the linked write-up removes that ambiguity. There are six references to "Air Force," and only one to "Army" (in regard to interoperability).

first post via space router

[Anonymous Coward]

first po
NO CARRIER

Re:first post via space router

[Anonymous Coward]

how is this off topic? this thing's supposed to be resistant to solar radiation interference. you're a total ass, you as
NO CARRIER

Re:first post via space router

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet Navy pilots would be pretty pissed if they ever got THAT error message.

Re:first post via space router

[Ray Radlein]

> first po
> NO CARRIER

For your information, I have no trouble reaching sites that are antispinward. I understand an effort is being made to hop messages the long way around the galaxy. At least this would give us an idea how big the loss is. Nothing has come back yet -- not surprising, I guess, considering the great number of hops and the expense.

Woohoo...

[It doesn't come easy]

Gonna need a hell of a long patch cable...

Re:Woohoo...

[twiddlingbits]

Cool- Another use for the Carbon Nanotubes they plan to use on the Space Elevator. :) But certainly not something you can buy for $10 at your local computer store.

Re:Woohoo...

[Anonymous Coward]

carbon nanotube - take a tap off the space elevator

Re:Woohoo...

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

What did you think the space elevator was for?

Re:Woohoo...

[routergod]

Not to mention the console cable...

Re:Woohoo...

[mikeb39]

You're living in the past man, 802.11g is what's hot these days. They will just need a hell of a big amplifier. :D

Re:Woohoo...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're going to have to ride the space elevator
up to the satellite and jack it in. Hope that
you don't charge for your service call by
Hours + Miles. (Better pack a lunch, ehh?)

Re:Woohoo...

[usernotfound]

i thought the limited length of a rollover cable was even far shorter than the standard 100m, too?

Ping times.

[grub]

I wonder what the ping times would be like...

(nb: I worked on some satellite internet stuff a few years ago.) If this unit is in geosynchronous orbit (so a fixed dish can always hit it), it's sitting almost 36,000 Km over the equator. Assuming your dish is at the equator a round trip is ~72,000 Km / 300,000 Km/sec (the speed of light) means the signal travels about a quarter second earth->earth not including any processing time at the satellite midway point or either end.

Re:Ping times.

[Kenja]

You win again speed of light. But I'll beat you some day!

Re:Ping times.

[Brett Buck]

It's surprising how long that ~1/2 a second can be. I've had conversations over a geo comsat, and it's pretty awkward - just long enough to screw up the flow, but not so long that you have to consciously compensate for it.

Re:Ping times.

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Air force general: (watching his tactical monitoring system skip and slop.) Damn Lag!

Re:Ping times.

[peragrin]

Yea Fragging bad guys with lag always sucks. Of course with luck the AI controlling the enemy troops will finally be improved.

I always hated an AI that was to easy to crush.

Re:Ping times.

[los furtive]

"She's built like a steakhouse, but she handles like a bistro. You win again gravity!"

Re:Ping times.

[EvilGrin666]

so 250ms then? :)

Re:Ping times.

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember the place I used to work we had leased an satelite connection as backup to WAN to our European offices and did some ping and bandwidth testing and here is what we observed.

WAN
ping avg 1500 ms
bandwitdh avg 8938 Mb/s

Satelite
ping avg 450 ms
bandwidth avg 2180 Mb/s

Remember that we only bought 10 Mb/s for the WAN and 3 Mb/s for the satelite.
Also those were idea conditions for the satelite. We did some test during some nasty solar storms and the connection can degrade up to 60%.

Re:Ping times.

[grub]

Yeah, yeah... :P

Re:Ping times.

[Anonymous Coward]

300k km/sec is speed of light IN A VACUUM...space dust might slow it down a tad.

How to harden a router.

[BeProf]

Wrap it in tinfoil?

Re:How to harden a router.

[3rd_Floo]

I know this was a joke, but just to give some extra insight to some rad hardening perticulars... Tinfoil would not be enough, creating efficient Rad hardened electronics is an interesting problem. Not only do you have to deal with simple EM types of interference, but the possibility of radiation flipping the bit stored in a register. Typically parallel processors that do redundant checks on data, multipath techniques and other sharing and swarm-consensus types of architectures would be employed. This is the preferred method because strapping a big honking metal plate is MUCH more costly, just to negate rad effects. Although they would still have to shield it against small-debris impacts.

Re:How to harden a router.

[Anonymous Coward]

Use it to surf pr0n sites.

Re:How to harden a router.

[Brett Buck]

Tinfoil is definitely not gonna do much - unless you stack it a foot thick. Tantalum foil is pretty common, however. And tantalum "spot shields" over critical parts, like any sort of solid state devices. No point in trying to protect things that aren't very susceptible to radiation damage.

But error-correction and redundancy is a lot lighter, and weight is vitally important.

Brett

Re:How to harden a router.

[e2ka]

Perhaps they could learn from electronics used in particle physics experiments, which are operating in very high radiation environments (higher than space? I would guess so.) In many cases custom electronics are made where a commercial solution would be much cheaper, but just won't operate in that environment.

One thing I have overheard while working for a CERN LHC experiment is that the smaller chip fabrication processes are more rad-hard. (More resilient to single-event upset)

Re:How to harden a router.

[Telastyn]

Frankly, I'd think they'll need to worry about large-non-debris impacts. I know I'd go for the main router rather than each individual communications link if I were an enemy commander.

[not that they could likely do much against an attack, but still, I hope they have backup links...]

Re:How to harden a router.

[geoffspear]

Name a country that the US is likely to get into a war with that has the technology to shoot down satellites. Keep in mind that we're unlikely to try invading anyone with nuclear weapons and the ability to launch them at American cities.

Re:How to harden a router.

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Don't you read your Spam. There are any number of pills available to harden things up.

Re:How to harden a router.

[Telastyn]

At the rate we're going, private companies will likely have the capability before Bush is out of office. But you make a fine point.

Re:How to harden a router.

[XMyth]

Do you really know it was a joke?

I'd like to flame you for lack of humor anyhow. Would you mind?

Re:How to harden a router.

[SUB7IME]

Yeah, we're unlikely to invade Iran.

Right guys?

Re:How to harden a router.

[geoffspear]

I don't think any credible source claims that Iran has ICBMs capable of reaching the United States.

I personally doubt their nuclear program has built a significant quantity of nuclear weapons, either, but I'm sure finding those weapons would be a large part of the justification for an invasion. In any event, I doubt they're capable of launching a satellite, let alone managing to build a weapon that could bring down a specific one.

Re:How to harden a router.

[rjhall]

Actually, in a past life I designed chips that needed to be rad hard. They were known as 'silicon on sapphire', i.e. the chip was on a sapphire substrate rather than silicon.

Is that still done, does anybody know?

Re:How to harden a router.

[Anonymous Coward]

Heavy metals work well. Milstar used Silver.

Re:How to harden a router.

[SUB7IME]

What about that missile that hit the Twin Towers?

Wait, you don't have to use ICBMs to enter into US territory?

Re:How to harden a router.

[geoffspear]

Are you suggesting that it's possible to crash a jet into a satellite?

Re:How to harden a router.

[davros74]

Actually, it's the other way around. Smaller fabrication geometries are more susceptible to SEUs. This is just basic physics. As the geometries get smaller, it takes less energy to disturb the state of a capacitor or transistor and flip it's intended logic state. As geometries continue to shrink, SEUs will become an issue for all consumer hardware, even at sea-level. This is why all level A certified FAA devices require such things as triple redundant logic with majority voting and scrubbing systems.

Re:How to harden a router.

[SUB7IME]

Quoting you, "Keep in mind that we're unlikely to try invading anyone with nuclear weapons and the ability to launch them at American cities."

Neither of us is talking about satellites, it seems.

Internet from moon,Eh?

[earthstar]

So is a router in sky gonna help access internet from MOON too?Just Wondering.

& hats the life of the satellite in sky ?

Re:Internet from moon,Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

radio communications would be a broadcast type signal, much like your wireless lan under your desk. so may i ask this, wtf is the point of a router if it is only going to repeat the signal? also we just burnt millions on a interplanatary polaroid now another million on something hiding under my desk? what is the point?

About Freaking Time

[Emugamer]

Okay this wasn't exactly the use that I had thought of an IP based communications grid and I for sure am not the most knowlegeable on the subject of radio communication arrays used by NASA et al but isn't it time that we have a formalized "cell" network in space to best aquire signals from microsats and such? reduce the cost of individual launchs by already having everything up there that you need to communicate with and then just move forwards with less communication equipment and more mission core equipment?

can someone who knows more about this tell me why this hasn't been done?!?

Re:About Freaking Time

[Detritus]

We already have TDRS (tracking data relay system). It is a system that can acquire data from satellites in low-Earth orbit with near-global coverage. A set of specialized satellites in geosynchronous orbit are used to track, command, and acquire data.

Re:About Freaking Time

[essreenim]

Networked cells - isn't that a form of communism?
Don't blame me, I'm just trying to get inside the American psyche. Getting into the American psyche, isn't that like,... communism??

Re:About Freaking Time

[twiddlingbits]

TDRS (there are multiple TDRS's actually) has some drawbacks: It's NOT real-time, it is time sliced to handle only certain sattelites at one time (limit is five). The first generation TDRS was originally intended to support Manned Missions like STS, and a few sattelites but now they have lots of missions going thru it. It's very utilized. Many Sattelites store data in on-board data recorders, compress it and play it back when it is their turn on TDRS. Some of the TDRS's were upgraded in recent years, and NASA added another band (Ka) and while that helps, older missions that need high bandwidth still suffer as they can't use the higher bandwidth channels (attenna's are sized and shaped to a certain comm band type, and you can't just replace/reprogram them). "Modern" sats can often communicate in multiple bands (S-Band for commands and Ku/Ka Band for high rate data). So, pretty soon the new TDRS's with high rate channels may become saturated. As far as TCP/IP in Space it's not really new, see http://www-ece.rice.edu/~duarte/images/elec524fina l.pdf Which talks about TCP/IP over TDRS to ISS. :) Even if the AF starts using this service, there are many devices up there that are not TCP/IP ready. Some systems could be patched but the old style comm systems will still be needed for a long time to come.

Re:About Freaking Time

[Kehvarl]

If you mean seperate cells with no direct line of contact between them aside from certain completely anonymous message drops, then you're talking about an ideal terrorism setup. No one individual or even cell can betray more than their own cell and maybe a few minor contacts of theirs.

I've heard of space manufacturing...

[EvilTwinSkippy]

... but it sounds like they are putting a wood shop in orbit. I guess the need pretty bevels or something.

Re:I've heard of space manufacturing...

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason is pretty simple... table saw is too heavy to launch.

A Space Router! Wowzers!

[syntap]

They figured out how to route space! Does this route time too?

My network closet router only routes closets.

"I wonder what the ping times would be like..."

[Anonymous Coward]

Not good considering your going to satellite and will be limited by the maximum speed light can travel. My experience is around 400 - 800ms

ET phone home

[It doesn't come easy]

So, how are they going to keep ET from patching in to the internet for free? Did they think of that? Eh?

Re:ET phone home

['nother poster]

SpaceWEP?

Re:ET phone home

[PornMaster]

Well, I'd venture to guess that ET's calls home would be cheaper over VOIP. :)

Re:ET phone home

[xstonedogx]

Easy. They filter traffic based on MAC address and drop all traffic from Speak-n-Spell devices.

Re:ET phone home

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple - use wifi and WEP. Because any alien that's travelled millions of miles won't be able to crack that will they?

Re:ET phone home

[Jiggily]

If ET hacks into our system and we find out he is evil, this will just make it easier for us to upload a virus to take out their mother ship.....

New versions of IP?

[KFK2]

The developers intend for the router to be upgradeable from the ground. As new iterations of the Internet Protocol are released and adopted, the router can be kept current.

So are they expecting IPv8 to be developed before IPv6 is even deployed?

Re:New versions of IP?

[McBainLives]

They're probably referring to the IPv4 to IPv6 upgrade. As is, IPv6 provides sufficient address space for a small galaxy.

Re:New versions of IP?

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Yes, but not nearly enough for a neural network complex enough to mimic the human brain when ... [this post terminated for violating the time traveler act of 2143]

Live at the end of a sat uplink....

[C. Alan]

...Sucks.

I have direcway, it was either that or dial-up because I live in the boonies of the tehachapi mountains in California. The lags are terrible, on the order to 2 seconds or more. Plus, when it snows, I have to clear the dish of snow to get online. Download rates are OK, but uploads are on the order of a 56k modem.

Re:Live at the end of a sat uplink....

[xuttah]

Umm...DirecWay is a consumer project with consumer-level reliability. While I prefer not to work with satellites, some carriers (VSAT, for one), have business-class operations that allow bidirectional high-speed bandwidth with latencies of about 600ms. That's high, yes, but not 2 seconds. And given that the Air Force may be putting more than $120/month into this deal, I'm guessing their performance (not latency, necessarily) could be higher.

Re:Live at the end of a sat uplink....

[Monkelectric]

You can actually get better upload rates by turning off the 56k protocol, although sometimes it is tricky to get the modem to do this. Basically 56k splits the send and recieve bandwith unevenly. in downs favor. Obviously thats quite useless on satelite.

Re:Live at the end of a sat uplink....

[Grishnakh]

I don't care what the Air Force's budget is. Unless they're going to use some subspace communications technology acquired through the Stargate program, the radio signals to and from that satellite are limited to light-speed. As another poster noted, a geosynchronous satellite is about 36000 km over the earth's surface, and even at light-speed, that's a noticeable time lag just for signal propagation.

Re:Live at the end of a sat uplink....

[drew]

and as other posters have noted, it takes a radio signal 250 ms to travel from the earths surface to geosynchronous orbit and back. so if the air force is willing to spend enough money making the hardware fast enough, there is still room for significant improvement over 2 seconds or even 600ms.

also, with a large enough budget, they may decide that geosynchronous satellites are not necessary. if they were willing to put up something around 60-100 leo satellites, and tackle the associated synchronization and handoff issues, they could probably get ping times down to around 10-20 ms.

If your'e not underneath it

[Ironsides]

You're assuming that you are on the same longitude as the satelite and directly underneath it. For the USA, it takes almost two seconds to send a signal up and back down at a ~45 degree angle to the satelite. Ping times are somwhere beween 3.75 and 4 seconds.

Re:If your'e not underneath it

[Anonymous Coward]

Re read the OP: Assuming your dish is at the equator

Re:If your'e not underneath it

[krymsin01]

You are also assuming that there will only be one router up there, on one longitude. With the US' military budget, I think they can afford to launch multiple ones.

Re:If your'e not underneath it

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I mentioned being at the equator. I'm sure google could turn up the formula. I subcontracted to design an openbsd flash-based thing. Then was told my contract wouldn't be extended once it was pretty much complete. I should have built in a timed-trojan horse.

Re:If your'e not underneath it

[Umrick]

Not insightful.

Direcway satellite. I'm in MD hitting a geosync satellite for my Internet. Average ping time is ~750ms to most sites. Nowhere near "3.75-4 seconds"

Note this is bi-directional... It's not cheating by sending a land signal out and getting returns by satellite.

And yes if you're interested, World of Warcraft runs just fine...

Re:If your'e not underneath it

[TigerNut]

How does that work? In the worst case the satellite appears on the horizon, which adds one Earth radius to the range. The total distance changes to about 84000 km (from 72000km in the parent post), which still leaves the propagation time at under 1/3 second.

Re:If your'e not underneath it

['nother poster]

Pole to GEO is 42635.

Pole to pole through GEO is 85270.

Using 300,000km/sec as the speed of light, we get... .2842333323... seconds. 284 ms is not great for a ping, but not too bad.

Re:If your'e not underneath it

[Anonymous Coward]

"And yes if you're interested, World of Warcraft runs just fine..."

Of course it is.. The games compensating for your horrible lag. Since its on your end, everything seems fine, but all the other player are pausing to wait for you and their game is jumpy and horrible.

Way to ruin a game, satellite man

Re:If your'e not underneath it

[Rei]

2 seconds? Since a TCP handshake requires 3 packets (although you can start right after you send the third packet), with a 2 second delay, that would mean 4 seconds minimum to initialize a TCP connection. Definitely not trivial.

SSL would be a bigger delay - 2 seconds for the client's settings packet to arrive at the server, 2 seconds for the server's settings and certificate to arrive at the client, 2 seconds for the master secret to get sent to the server, then (assuming that the client's confirmation isn't the holdup) 2 seconds for the server's confirmation that it will be now be using the encrypted connection, and then lastly 2 seconds for the first bit of client data to make it to the server. 10 seconds total - ouch!

Re:If your'e not underneath it

[Anonymous Coward]

world of warcrack runs pretty good (ping times over a second) on the 28.8 dial up (if you are lucky) in the middle of farm country at my parents house.

Re:If your'e not underneath it

[fshalor]

DSL on one end, Internet 2-->fiber-->cat5e on the other for 3 hops and I've seen 10+ seconds to get an SSH connection established.

This would still be very viable for communications. I don't think the fighter pilots will be interested in fragging some noobs in RTCW, so 500 ms should get them done.

Any word on the bandwith?

Re:If your'e not underneath it

[zombiestomper]

Of course, you're assuming that they are using current commercial technology for the project. The delay could be overcome using some tangled quantum pairs. But, then again, if they were using those why would they need a sattelite?

Re:If your'e not underneath it

[Anonymous Coward]

That is processing time on the satillite. THink of equipment that is about 20 years old. The chips that go into sats. are not top of the lines chips. These all have to be radiation hardened and are designed to run for a VERY long time as servicing is not an option. And yes, the original poster was insiteful, as he calculated the time, showing that the slow-down is not in the physics, but electronics.

Re:If your'e not underneath it

[ajs]

I'm not sure what the grandparent was talking about, but in the case where the sat appears on the horizon, you might not be able to get a good enough signal through that much atmosphere. Worst case, you might need to relay through a satellite that appears in (guess here) the 90 degrees of sky directly above you. This being the case, you might then take substantially longer than 1/3 of a second to get from point A to point B.

Where your original distance was a function of 2R, you're now travelling distances that are a function of 2*pi*R+2R... the other inputs are the distance between the earth's surface and the sat (X), as well as the distance between sats in radians (Y). The final formula, if you are directly below the first sat, and your target is directly below the second, 2X+YRsat (keeping in mind here that Rsat is the Rearth plus X), and that grows a bit if your sat is not, or you are relaying through a sat that is not directly above your target, of course.

Ok, that's enough of that ;-)

Re:If your'e not underneath it

[TigerNut]

Agreed. I was approaching it from a purely geometrical point of view. In my past life working on GPS receiver stuff, we'd typically acquire satellites very close to the horizon, but not get good signal to noise until they were at least 5 degrees above the horizon. As an offhand guess I think that would only knock about 1000km off the round-trip distance on a direct linkup. Once you start adding in space based relays, you can get some significant delays.

Re:If your'e not underneath it

[Bishop923]

I don't think the fighter pilots will be interested in fragging some noobs in RTCW

Nah, they probably prefer Desert Combat...

Re:If your'e not underneath it

[slamb]

Direcway satellite. I'm in MD hitting a geosync satellite for my Internet. Average ping time is ~750ms to most sites. Nowhere near "3.75-4 seconds"

750ms is actually worse than I would have expected.

The contributing factors that I see are:

• 477 ms: four trips between the earth and the satellite. (Ping from ground to satellite to ground, pong from ground to satellite to ground.) Geosynchronous orbit is 35,786 km above the surface. So in the optimistic case (satellite directly above both sides of the connection), that adds 4*35,787 km/s /3.00e8 m/s * 1e3 m/km = .477 sec.
• less than 8.5 ms: additional time to a satellite not directly overhead. You add no more than the Earth's radius to each trip (and less, I think. It's not significant enough to bother doing the geometry to nail it down more.) That's an additional 4*6,378 km / 3.00e8 m/s * 1e3 m/km = .0850 sec.
• ~40 ms: processing. My pings, which travel an insigificant distance, tend to be in this range.
• over 200 ms: ???

And yes if you're interested, World of Warcraft runs just fine...

But not Counterstrike, I'm sure. The nearly half-second delay geosync satellites must add makes them completely useless for some things. And makes people want to reduce the number of trips. It sounds like this Air Force project is designed to ensure each packet goes source->satellite->destination rather than source->satellite->ground router->satellite->destination.

Re:If your'e not underneath it

[Anonymous Coward]

No. You can't send data with entangled particles - your observation will mess them up if you don't know the right polarization!

Re:If your'e not underneath it

[draggy]

That's why most modern satellite IP links don't use TCP but XTP.

What's so special about routers?

[hazee]

Every satelite up there has to withstand "the constant barrage of solar radiation in orbit". If the communications, or video or whatever got scrambled, then they wouldn't be a whole lot of use.

So what's so special about a router?

Re:What's so special about routers?

[endoboy]

other than the fact that nobody's flown one yet, nothing

Re:What's so special about routers?

[TheFlyingGoat]

If you set up a router in geosynchronous orbit around Mars, you wouldn't need line of sight to get the data from a rover back to Earth. You could do this with just a repeater, though.

It gets interesting as we spread out more and more. You can set up a router in geosynchronous orbit around each planet, and data has a much more likely chance of getting back to Earth. You can relay pictures of the stars from Mars to Earth when it's on the other side of the sun.

You can also send satellites out past Pluto, and if you have a router in orbit around Pluto, there's a good chance for it to relay the signal back to Saturn, Neptune, or Uranus. Then those can relay it back closer and so on. It's much better than the laser aligned communications we use now, where the satellite needs a direct line back to Earth.

Re:What's so special about routers?

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Um, Nasa beat you to the idea on both counts. In fact they have an entire system called the Deep Space Network that uses an adapted form of TCP/IP to relay information around the solar system. (Adapted because TCP/IP normally cacks when delays exceed 2 minutes. Travel time for signals around the solar system can be hours or days.)

Re:What's so special about routers?

[querencia]

Exactly! Communications satellites have on-board computers and thousands of transponders. Preparing electronics for the rigors of space is now a well-understood practice. There is no reason that a router should be any different from any of the other equipment, should there?

I suppose it is interesting that you could have packets routed between war planes without needing ground-based network services. Not sure why it's necessary, but interesting.

Re:What's so special about routers?

[Anonymous Coward]

ground based networking equipment can be gotten rid of by anyone with enough intent, trying to do the same to a satellite takes a lot more than that. Though you can attempt to jam the signal, but that again takes a lot more expertise.

Re:What's so special about routers?

[duffbeer703]

Satellietes cost alot of money to put into space, so they'll be there for a long, long time.

"Solar radiation" might be BS anyway... a USAF combat support router is a target. Its highly likely that enemies of the US will attempt to use laser, emp or other forms of radiation to disable the router in orbit.

There are publicly documented cases of Russian and Chinese space facilities attempting to blind US satellites with lasers...

Re:What's so special about routers?

[sconeu]

A router in geosync, though has unavoidable delays of 250ms one way.

Geosync is 22300 miles. c is 186000 miles/sec.

one way to server (earth->geosync->earth) is about 45000 miles, or 250ms at c.

Re:What's so special about routers?

[larkost]

Ah... the wonderful results of the "IP over Carrier Pigeon" April Fools joke. We geeks can take things to seriously... then make something useful of a joke.

Re:What's so special about routers?

[evangellydonut]

First of all, Northrop and Lockheed are one of the 2 parties competing for the TSAT contract. Boeing & company (ie IBM, etc) are the other party.

Let's see... w/o divulging any proprietary or competition sensitive info:

In regards to space effect... loads of radiation can cause Single Event Upset (SEU) or latch up. Getting semiconductor parts made for space is extremely costly, and afaik, there isn't a single router chip that can reliably operate in space. As far as shielding is concerned, you'll need a ridiculous amount of tin-foil to block enough of the heavy particles, so that's not very fesible. SOI is inherently better when it comes to space effects, but still pretty shitty compared to a rad-hard part. I think the most advanced commercially available space-qualified CPU is Honeywell's chip based on Motorola's (Freescale) 750, and there are very few FPGAs (for DSP etc) with little gate count that are space qualified...

Last but not least, the capacity that the Air Force wants is pretty insane... I think that's all I'm allowed to say...

Re:What's so special about routers?

[EvilTwinSkippy]

I do wonder if the new satellite implements the "Evil Bit" properly.

Re:What's so special about routers?

[iNetRunner]

Somehow I doubt this is what the USAF had in mind... Or maybe they found some WMDs on the Titan.. =)

Re:What's so special about routers?

[njyoder]

Wow that's very informative, thanks for that. I'm going to go around telling everyone this so you get in trouble, lol ;-P

In space,

[Vengeance]

In space, noone can hear you ping.

Re:In space,

[Wordsmith]

Is it possible to mod something -1 "oy?"

Re:In space,

[Anonymous Coward]

noone?

Re:In space,

[Anonymous Coward]

Funniest post ever....

universal IP network

[alphakappa]

Maybe this is a sign of things to come. As we send spacecrafts to Mars and other planets (and someday planets beyond our solar system), the InterPlanetary Internet will need such routers. A router satellite followed by routers in space and on other planets would create a nice little backbone to base our communications on. There would be one hell of a delay, but we could send our spacecrafts farther and farther away without losing the ability to communicate.

Re:universal IP network

[MrP-(at work)]

What the hell is up with the IPN logo?

Earth, the moon (??? Its not even a planet!), jupiter, saturn, neptune, and mars

That's only 5 planets and 1 moon.. Unless you count the big green sphere.. Whats that Planet X?

Re:universal IP network

[alphakappa]

More from Vincent Cerf on creating an interplanetary IP network.

Punk Buster: Military-Industrial Complex Edition

[Anonymous Coward]

Price: 6 Trillion USD. (5.5 Trillion USD upgrade price for previous Punk Buster customers)

Use of Pseudo-IP

[Marillion]

I sort of got the sense form the article that the "Flow-Based" IP might be some form of pseudo-IP protocol. This might help the ping time of stream based data.

look out Hubble!

[dubdays]

Maybe when the Hubble gets retired they can use it for one hell of a cantenna...

Ping Time

[TheFlyingGoat]

It would be around 270ms for a satellite in geosynchronous orbit. It would be a bit more for a router on the moon. :)

It's in early concept phase

[JohnnyComeLately]

"Risk Reduction Phase" is acquisitions speak for, 'we're getting ideas and picking which concepts meet our needs the best'. I recognize the network as being used for voice or remote satellite operations. So they must be seeing the need down the road to use IP for communicating with satellites or users. I don't think you'd use it with the moon (probably a joke but if you were serious...) because the geo sync will always have a common point over the earth (hence the name) but be moving relative to the moon. You'd have Lunar eclipse periods where no comm is possible. Same problem with deep space missions, such as Mars or the recent moon landing they had (not our moon, one of Saturn's).

Sounds cool. Combines my two worlds of IT and satellites.

Space devil

[some_god]

this is clear proof that the US Air Force continues to suport and cooperate with the space devil

The secret's out...

[ptomblin]

UFOs are war flyers looking to see if earth has an open node yet.

Re:The secret's out...

[maxwell demon]

So you mean the only reason why we didn't yet have contact to extraterrestials is the missing space routers?

Re:The secret's out...

[djlurch]

War drivers...I see a road trip in our future!

Re:The secret's out...

[psetzer]

T@|The first sign of unintelligent life in outer space.

Warfighters?

[razmaspaz]

communications to warfighters

I knew it, the military has developed deadly bots to hunt down and kill warchalkers.

ping time

[notoriousE]

after tweaking and tweaking for hours on end, I managed to get my direcway satellite internet connection to go round trip in 450ms. i can't imagine shaving too much more off of this, maybe 350ms assuming better equipment on the other end.

More information about IP in space here

[Anonymous Coward]

http://ipinspace.gsfc.nasa.gov

Actually this is old news. In the rare event anyone here wants detailed information you can find it here: http://ipinspace.gsfc.nasa.gov/documents/NRO.pdf

Ping times can be found on page 82 of the pdf

Internet during wartime!

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, do you think opposing armies will try to send US forces links to Goatse.cx, Tubgirl.com, or random porn to distract them?

NASA is already doing this with CISCO

[alphakappa]

From an April 2004 news report. There is an interesting quote there:

"..isco does not expect to develop a business selling space hardware, and estimated that the market for satellite-based Internet routers may be only 15 or 20 units over the next decade. Instead, Cisco's plans are focused on the ground-systems business that could be created if satellites are able to communicate using Internet protocols. With Internet-based communications, laptop computers and personal digital assistants could become de facto satellite ground stations."

Re:NASA is already doing this with CISCO

[LiquidCoooled]

IBM said something similar......

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.", Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM. (1943)

And of course, Bill and his 640kb (disputed).

Oh, and Taco and his dismissal of the iPod.

Anyway, people have undersold themselves the world over, and will continue to.

Re:NASA is already doing this with CISCO

[alphakappa]

true, but note that CISCO is talking about the immediate future, so even though this may be a big thing in the future, there may not be many sales in the next decade.

Budget Cutbacks

[lxt]

Am I the only one who has this image of a bog standard Belkin router encased in a biscuit tin?

Re:Budget Cutbacks

[mikael]

I was thinking more in the lines of a Wifi antennae in a jumbo pack of pringles.

Apparently, they already have a prototype of the orbital transponder ready for launch

Ping replies

[Anonymous Coward]

Our companys ashore network is connected to our ferries with satellite connection and we get ping replies from the ferries in about 600 milliseconds. So I suppose this is is the answer to the perhaps rhetorical question asked.

- Grunt -

W.. h.. y... w.. o.. u.. l.. d... y.. o.. u

[JohnnyGTO]

w.. o.. r.. r.. y.... a.. b..o..u..t....p..i.. n.. g....t.. i.. m.. e.. s....?

Re:W.. h.. y... w.. o.. u.. l.. d... y.. o.. u

[Anonymous Coward]

If this thing is communicating with fighter jets, ping times aren't as large a concern as jitter. Fighter jets move very rapidly, of course, so VoIP would be horrible. :)

Re:W.. h.. y... w.. o.. u.. l.. d... y.. o.. u

[__int64]

I can just see it now: Pentagon claims they lost the battle due to lag...

"OMG afaganastan you were so Fuxed, were going to p0wn j00 a$$...until bush started downloading a teribyte of porn and we got lagged while camping the spawn point."

What is the medium called

[suso]

is it going to use aethernet?

Re:What is the medium called

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, space consists of æther.

Re:What is the medium called

[ajlitt]

In Soviet Russia, it will be called the Cosmonet.

Supernetting?

[Beefslaya]

Imagine the PIX to cover that subnet?

Re:A Space Router! Wowzers!

[maxwell demon]

You misunderstood. They are developing a router which drops everything but whitespace characters.

OT: Warfighter

[Dr. Cody]

Can somebody explain why I have never seen anyone enraged by this word's existance? Maybe I'm just not looking hard enough, but I have never seen anyone proclaim that "warfighter" is a blatant example of Newspeak or a shameless parody of L. Ron Hubbard's knack for descriptive writing.

Has this word been around for a while? I can't recall hearing it before the advent of warblogging. If anything, it seems like a step in the wrong direction, for being a euphemism, and all (if at all).

Re:OT: Warfighter

[B5_geek]

Enraged? No, more like pity.

I'll let you pick who I feel the pity for.

Re:OT: Warfighter

[EvilTwinSkippy]

The word seems to be an obscure military jargon term. The earliest citation seems to be in 1986. Though I seem to recall the word being used in texts dating back to WWI.

Re:OT: Warfighter

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey at least it is WARfighter.
You know 1984 is here when the term is
"PEACEfighter"

Re:OT: Warfighter

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everyone fighting a war is a soldier. Hence, 'Warfighter'. That said, the word is used as applying to everyone down to infantry grunts. So where does that leave us? To answer the other question, it's been in use at least 10 years in military circles. It's an example of the press finally picking up on something in common usage by people closer to the problem.

Re:OT: Warfighter

[Anonymous Coward]

Warfighter is US DOD-speak for those at the tip of the sword; people actually on the combat end of operations. Although lately, it's been used to describe anyone supporting combat operations. It's been around a while, but more in vogue in the last decade.

Re:OT: Warfighter

[jac1962]

"Warfighter" is a term USAF has been using for several years. Since the majority of USAF personnel serve in roles that will likely never be involved in direct combat, the term is used to describe people who do actively fight and kill the enemy. It's meant to remind the support personnel that the USAF's primary job is fighting wars (and if you've ever worked with the Air Force you'll know why they need reminding).

USAF is fond of euphemisms, catchphrases, and slogans, the most infamous of course being the now-defunct Strategic Air Command's "Peace Is Our Profession" motto.

I spent twenty-three years on active duty with USAF. While we often laughed at the sometimes ridiculous language the PHBs and Public Affairs types dreamed up (my favorite - the Air Force Flight Test Center's "Warriors Supporting Warriors" motto, as if the civilian electrical/aerospace/computer engineers working on the F/A-22 Raptor or OV-22 Osprey projects were commuting to work every morning with knives in their teeth), we were never enraged and I don't know why we should have been. The Air Force is as prone (sometimes more so) to management buffoonery as any large corporation. Thinking up new words instead of using perfectly good ones like warrior is a symptom of this buffoonery.

Don't get mad. Rent a copy of Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove and laugh, because laughter is the best weapon of them all.

Re:OT: Warfighter

[Anonymous Coward]

The word has been common use for over 2 decades, as found in military doctrine papers - and traces its origin back a good deal farther than I care to prove.

It distinguishes between military personnel who actually conduct warfare vice any of the other ancillary/support activities attendant to such and/or military personnel unrelated to operations. It is most useful when setting the scope of a requirement or characterizing the nature of the activity, or when presenting operational theory.

Perhaps your never having seen anyone else enraged betrays your own lexigraphic lackings?

Re:OT: Warfighter

[Aceto3for5]

Warfighter: One who fights in a war Streetfighter: One who fights in a street Firefighter: One who fights in a fire Warblogging: One who blogs in war Slashdotter: One who dots in a slash?

Re:OT: Warfighter

[Sinical]

Uh, many many military folks use the word warfighter. It describes the jobs of the front-line combat service personnel from all branches of the military (not cooks or other non-combat personnel).

"We provide the best XYZ possible to our nation's warfighters".

I've seen it for a number of years in (a) magazines devoted to military equipment (Journal of Electronic Defense (JED)) (b) heard it from the various military customer-type people I come into contact with as a defense contractor (they may have been infected with 'bizspeak', though, for all I know).

JED in particular has a column called "I: First Person Singular" that is usually accounts of retired service personnel describing their experience with various electronics defense systems (radar, ECM, ECCM, other EW gear) in combat situations (World War II, Korea, and Vietnam). The people writing these columns often use warfighter without any indication of discomfort or irony.

It's a real word that is just now percolating into common usage via the enlightened interest in things military spurred on by the conflict in Iraq.

Re:OT: Warfighter

[gmcraff]

Probably because this is the term that the professional military has adopted to refer to themselves. The distinction is as follows:

WARRIOR: Someone who fights in battle and wins.

WARFIGHTER: Someone who fights in war and wins.

The connotation is that the "warrior" concept holds great personal skill at arms, but no greater vision. The "warfighter" concept includes personal skill at arms, but also tactical ability, strategic planning, logistical support... in general, someone who can fight and think. Inherent in that definition is that a warfighter must adhere to standards of conduct, be bound by legitimate laws of war, and be economical in the application of force. A warfighter fights and plans because the end goal is to end a war, prevent a war, or avoid a 'peace' worse than war.

For historical perspective: The kings of the middle ages could be seen as warriors. They fought battles, made alliances, broke alliances, fought again, gained some ground, lost some ground, and some or all of this was cause for the next round of wars. General MacArthur, on the other hand, was a warfighter. He fought the WW2 battle in the Pacific, skipping over Japanese military concentration on islands that had no strategic value (thereby saving lives on both sides), won decisely and then after the Japanese surrender, broke the cycle of war by rebuilding Japan and making them steadfast allies.

Re:OT: Warfighter

[Anonymous Coward]

And as odd as it sounds, it's less cumbersome than saying 'soldiers/sailors/airmen/etc etc etc'. Most of those terms are fairly particular to a single service, after all.

Re:OT: Warfighter

[Anonymous Coward]

Your somewhat hippy-dippy musings are incorrect. =/

Re:OT: Warfighter

[Ironpoint]

The word warfighter causes enragement (at least when I read it) because it tries to bring people who fight in wars up to the level of "carpenter" or "school teacher". The context it is used in implies that fighting wars should be or is commonplace and an everyday thing.

Naturally, people who make their living making weapons and military equipment would like to believe that war is a way of life and someone needs shooting 7 days a week, because otherwise they would be out of a job.

Soldiers are not necessarily warfighters, they can be guards, MPs, cooks, engineers, etc.

The term is only used by people who are hoping to profit by keeping the fire lit, so to speak.

Re:OT: Warfighter

[DerekLyons]

Uh, many many military folks use the word warfighter. It describes the jobs of the front-line combat service personnel from all branches of the military (not cooks or other non-combat personnel).

Uh.. Depending on your service, cooks and other non-combatants may be at the front lines as well as being in combat. On USN ships in WWII it was the cooks, storekeepers, etc... that handled ammo for the big guns and manned the smaller stuff. Even today these folks are key parts of Damage Control parties, phone talkers, and all manner of other important jobs.

I've seen it for a number of years in (a) magazines devoted to military equipment (Journal of Electronic Defense (JED)) (b) heard it from the various military customer-type people I come into contact with as a defense contractor (they may have been infected with 'bizspeak', though, for all I know).

It's decidely post Desert Storm. I was in the service during the 80's and we never used nor heard the term.

JED in particular has a column called "I: First Person Singular" that is usually accounts of retired service personnel describing their experience with various electronics defense systems (radar, ECM, ECCM, other EW gear) in combat situations (World War II, Korea, and Vietnam). The people writing these columns often use warfighter without any indication of discomfort or irony.

I use terms like 'upload' and 'download' and 'reboot' and whole host of other "modern" computer terminology to describe stuff I did on my fire control system back in the 80's to general members of the public. But those aren't the terms we used then.

Re:OT: Warfighter

[mtaff]

Um, I went to basic (ARMY) in January 1990, _pre_ Desert Storm, and we used the term warfighter then.

I went to ODS as well, as a cook (though all I did was drive a deuce and a half 20 hours a day) in a combat unit (HHC 4-37 AR, 1ID). We were at most 2 klicks behind our tanks, and were even ambushed.

As a rule of thumb, anyone in a combat or combat service support unit, regardless of military branch, were referred to as warfighters. This would include cooks in combat units, but not cooks in support units. It would include mechanics (yes, they actually fix tanks while under fire), and MP's (an example of combat service support, as MP's are usually _in front_ of the front lines).

It generally referred to people who a) went looking for a fight, or b)were likely to find a fight, even if they weren't looking for it.

Mark

Re:OT: Warfighter

[DerekLyons]

Um, I went to basic (ARMY) in January 1990, _pre_ Desert Storm, and we used the term warfighter then.

Um.. 1990 isn't significantly earlier than Desert Storm. I didn't however make myself clear, I was in the USN, and we didn't use the term. Friends in the USAF didn't use the term. Friends in the USMC didn't use the term. Friends in the USA across the 80's and early 90's didn't use the term. I've been following military affairs since the late 70's, and didn't hear the term until the mid 90's.

That suggests the term is of a) recent construction and b) even more recent shift to widespread usage.

Re:OT: Warfighter

[A1C Lickey]

In the military the word warfighter seperates those who actually fight the wars out on the frontlines (the teeth) from those who support them (the tail).

And war is a way of life. We train and work so hard at killing because it is difficult, and because it is sometimes neccesary. But that doesn't mean we think there should be fighting 24/7. Soldiers know what war is, we see the horrors of it first hand, and it's our asses on the line. But sometimes it is neccesary.

wtf?? This is new?

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, actually there are plenty of space based internet providers, not to mention general VPN providers in space..

I've done some work on VSAT related TCP networks. Ping times are HORRIBLE.. I was actually told by one of their techs that they do not "properly support ICMP" at all. :S Although you would get ping responses if you set the timeout to 10 seconds..

For fail-over we set up a test, where it would have to fail 10 ping tests, 0 bytes, time out set to 10 seconds, anothing less and it would always start randomly switching to the frame lines.

IP in flight

[Anonymous Coward]

"Another difficulty that you're faced with is that you're very severely bandwidth limited," said Brad Wurtz, president and chief executive officer at Caspian. "You have limited amounts of the size of traffic that you can move through the switch or router."

Actual transcript from an F-16 mission:

CoolHand: "Target locked, *to wingman* Firebird engage."
Hawk: "Firebird?"
Firebird: "Sorry, I was just... experiencing some delay in communication, the space router must be acting up again..."
Hawk: "If I find out you've been surfing porn again I'll have you grounded for good. Have I made myself clear?"
Firebird: "Yes, sir."
Hawk: "Follow in formation, breaking left now..."
Hawk: "Firebird? Use the OTHER joystick, Firebird..."

Protection from barrage of solar radiation...yes

[weeboo0104]

Protection from constant barrage of /.ers...No

Will the G-MEN from Hell run it?

[agent]

http://www.razordigitalent.com/
Or did the contract already go to M$?
Peace

one ping..

[emptybody]

and one ping only.

Re:one ping..

[Snarfangel]

Don't you mean

One ping to rule them all
One ping to find them
One ping to nuke them all
And in the darkness find them

Re:one ping..

[Anonymous Coward]

Even with preview, I missed that. It *should* be

One ping to rule them all
One ping to bind them
One ping to nuke them all
And in the darkness find them

/ I'll quit now.

Re:one ping..

[Anonymous Coward]

The Hunt For Red October?

Re:one ping..

[emptybody]

crazy ivan

Well, it's simpler to use wood

[Anonymous Coward]

Doing metallurgy in orbit would require a space heater.

2AM

[CypherXero]

(Phone Rings)
Boss: The router went down, we need you to fix it...now.
You: Fuck.

Re:2AM

[MrP-(at work)]

You: "went down"? Can you please elaborate.

With space routers, going down has multiple meanings.

Re:2AM

[MemoryAid]

"went down" has always had at least one non-literal meaning.

Re:2AM

[LiquidCoooled]

Me: Wooooooohoooooooo onsite!

If I was in charge of this, I would install a Microsoft OS in it, just so I could make weekly visits to clean out the spyware and stuff.

Re:2AM

[Linker3000]

Then you go on site and discover you need a crossover cable and you only brought straight-wired!

Re:2AM

[gardyloo]

Aerosmith has to re-record their classic, to be renamed "Love in a Nanotube-Tethered Space Elevator".

Dropped packets.

[BeProf]

So what happens to dropped packets? Do they burn up on re-entry or go into an orbit?

Re:Dropped packets.

[CPUgrind]

The router will not drop any packets due to zero gravity.

why this is important

[kvnflynn]

Currently almost all military satellite communications are point-to-point in nature. most of the time this is done by converting IP traffic to serial data before sending over the modems and satellite. this causes ip traffic to be routed back to a core facility before heading on to its final destination. being able to route IP in the sky would provide better mobile-to-mobile communications with less overhead and more dynamic in nature... both reducing delay and bandwidth.

Re:why this is important

[stuktongue]

Thank you for this post; it is the first I have seen that mostly captures the intent of this technology. Moderators, please mod the parent up as insightful. Now, allow me to elaborate somewhat....

I work for Boeing Satellite Systems. While I won't comment on the specifics of this system, since it is in a competitive study phase, I will say that the whole point of this is to create a new, more dynamically configurable system for interconnecting users. A (hopefully) useful analogy is this: Traditional satcom systems set up user comm like you make phone calls or conference calls--detailed setup is required and finite resources limit the number of calls that can be active at any one time; this new approach promises to allow users to communicate as they do over the Internet--minimum setup with much higher capacity due to virtual circuits.

A lot of focus in this thread has been on latencies due to earth-space-earth links. These latencies exist for current systems and are worked around (or are relatively unimportant to begin with). It is the flexibility that packet routing offers that makes this new system so attractive.

Re:why this is important

[grozzie2]

This is /., they are all concerned about ping times and arp tables, hoping to spoof ethernet macs, and get bogus 'good latency' reports from games. They dont actually even understand basic ip networking (ip can run on a lot more physical carriers than just the ethernet to your cable modem), never mind the issues of switching from dedicated up/downlinks thru dumb transponders, to placing the digital smarts up in orbit so that routing can actually be done up there, reducing one full space/earth/space round trip from the full route.

Overall, this is an inevitable development, the amateur oscars have been doing this type of stuff for a decade. The only surprising thing about this type of architectural change, is that it took so long for systems to head this direction. But, one thing we can rest assured on, with a Boeing/Military relationship, the 'study' phase alone is going to cost more than a truely inspired private company would spend putting the entire constellation into orbit :)

Re:why this is important

[stuktongue]

I'm impressed; you've managed, in a single post, to throw insults at almost every person who might read it. :-) While almost every joke has an element of truth in it, I will take issue with your last comment: "... with a Boeing/Military relationship, the 'study' phase alone is going to cost more than a truely inspired private company would spend putting the entire constellation into orbit."

It is certainly true that large organizational efforts, especially ones that involve the government, have their inefficiencies and attendant financial overhead. That said, your comment trivializes the efforts of the study teams in a most insulting way. I am willing to assume you know very little about what it takes to architect, design, develop, and implement a system as complex as the transformational satellite system, or, for that matter, any modern multi-role, multi-service, secure, and robust global military communication system.

I wonder if your hypothetical private enterprise's CEOs would be willing to put themselves in wartime situations with their systems as their communication lifelines. The rules change when billions of dollars and thousands of lives are at stake.

One final analogy: If you were a fighter pilot flying your F-whatever into combat, how much engineering/testing/support is enough?

Nanotube/Van der Waals tech might show up there

[ScentCone]

This month's Scientific America (sorry, can't link to print material, and they don't put the feature stuff on the web site) talks at length about carbon nanotube RAM technology. Quite cool, and worth the issue's cover price. Not news, of course - just a nice profile, and they do mention the approach's native radiation tolerance, ideal for this.

Here 's a quick intro.

Re:A Space Router! Wowzers!

[Anonymous Coward]

If it routes space, it routes spacetime as well.

So this is how SKYNET begins....

[Anonymous Coward]

... or the Matrix...

Bundles of fun

[fnord_uk]

"Caspian has already developed a "flow state router," which is able to work with entire messages rather than individual data packets."

I wonder if they are equating "entire messages" with the bundling concept?

See Disruption Telerant Networking at www.dtnrg.org

I know it says Delay, not Disruption, but the webmaster hasn't got the message (or should I say, bundle), yet!

Re:Ping time

[gik]

Fast enough to play Halo 2. Fast enough to kill sandniggers. Good enough for us.

BTW, thanks god, for wiping out 200,000 of the monkeys for us. Really saved us some time.

Sometimes I let slashdot fool me into thinking all the people who read/post stories/replies here are all the same kinds of geeks, like me.

It's people like you who remind me how wholly different I am from, for example, someone as shit-brained as you.

Encryption

[AviLazar]

Now don't forget guys: Make sure to use WEP encryption keys and turn on your MAC filtering and change the default IP and password. And for god's sake, change the SSID from linksys to something else.

Re:Encryption

[DrWho520]

I always thought wardriving was lame. Suddenly, not so much...

Re:Encryption

[AviLazar]

This brings war driving to a whole other level.

Re:Encryption

[magefile]

If I was in charge, I'd insist they name it linksys. That'd be funny as hell.

Already done, kinda

[amightywind]

The TDRS satellites have served this function for the last 20 years for NASA. Traditional communications satellites also transmit IP routinely. Technically, they are not wireless routers, they are transponders. But one of their uses is to transmit IP streams.

The Iridium and Globalstar constellations also operate as cell networks in space.

If the shoe fits?

[Zebra_X]

I'm not sure that it does.

Is IP really the protocol to use under these conditions? Is there something better?

Thoughts, comments welcome

No packets a good idea?

[Lifereaper0]

They mentioned that they are using a router that handles whole messages instead of individual packets, but doesn't having packets help the router to know that it lost a couple do to the nummering in the packet header and thus request a resend? If you are sending whole messages, isn't the potential for total message lost more likely?

Re:No packets a good idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

doesn't having packets help the router to know that it lost a couple do to the nummering in the packet header and thus request a resend?

No. Routers don't do that.

Re:No packets a good idea?

[Lifereaper0]

Yeah I realized my mistake after I posted sorry :(

Why IP?

[Anonymous Coward]

This space net sounds perfect for token ring, but then again I'm really, really stupid.

Re:Ping times. / more interestingly

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

Statistically, there has to be life on other planets somewhere. There is also probability that this life evolved to the point of having computers. There is a slim chance (ok maybe not a snowballs chance in hell) that they created IP networks like us. But, I promise you, if there is even a single iota of a chance that they did. My godd--ned corporate network will find a way to incorporate some Altairian ISPs slowest router as an entry in my OSPF tables. Resulting in 7 year latency. Furthermore, my users and there stupid click anywhere attitude will probably trigger an interstellar war.

Re:Ping time

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's moronic views like yours that make the rest of the world resentful and angry with America, you dumbass.

Re:wtf?? This is new?

[ebrandsberg]

You didn't catch that current technology doesn't do the routing IN space, it does it at a single point on the ground. This allows several uplinks to be used more effectively. As an example, if you make use of these vsat IP providers to connect between two remote sites, the communications would be ground->sat->ground (hub)->sat->ground, meaning the packets have to traverse twice as far as they otherwise would if routed in space.

Not Much Good

[Morosoph]

It would just be vulnerable to space snort.

The future

[stratjakt]

Screw kludges like wifi and 3G wireless.

How about some nice IP via satellite, a la satellite based phones? Potentially much more throughput, and if the routers in the bird itself, ping times wouldn't be an issue (I'd guess around 100ms or so).

Space Router

[stratjakt]

To put nice rounded edges on space cabinetry?

Hardly the first router in space...

[Mondoz]

The ISS (International Space Station) has been flying a Smart Switch Router for years in the Russian Segment of the onboard network.

The Router
Here's an ISS status report that mentions it.

New proposed nomenclature

[Anonymous Coward]

I propose a new verb for when someone owns one of these space routers : "V'ger." Examples: "Like, it took me 5 minutes to V'ger that unpatched space router." "I V'gered skynet and they sent me to Guantanamo."

the new fad

[drunken dash]

it's only a matter of time before we see spacedriving ;-)

just lovely

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't get high speed where i live on earth but they can get it in space?

Features of the Space Router

[DaedalusLogic]

A Dynamic DNS client so you can host spacerouter.kicks-ass.net out of your secret bunker.
It's stackable, so that you can puts your Space Access Point and Space Cable Modem on top of it.
AOL Parental Filters and Zone Alarm integration, to keep out terrorists and keep troops safe from porn.
Web Based Administration, just point your command and control laptop to http://192.168.1.1
WEP is used as the super strong security protocol protecting data too and from your computers.
In a few months Linux hackers will find a way to flash the memory and load their own firmware so they can use it as an iTunes server.

Ping times

[thegnu]

I wonder what the ping times would be like...

I'm sure it would be somewhere around .25 seconds.

Slantrange

[bsd4me]

My az/el spreadsheet is at home, but the slant range for an elevation of 0deg for an antenna on the equator is about 42000km.

42000km / 300000000m/sec = 140msec

So the time of flight for an antenna pointing at the horizon is 280msec.

Correction.

[thegnu]

I'm sure it would be somewhere around .25 seconds.

Or rather, 690-1150 ms. Don't believe everything you read on the Internet, huh? :-)

Counter-Strike on the router...

[game kid]

Terrorists win!

[NASA] spaceguy: H0ust0n, we hav t3h p0rbl3m...*

*Lines such as OMG t3h LAGGG SUX0RZ!!!1!1!one and similar were omitted for clarity.

Traceroute

[lbmouse]

I wonder what the ping times would be like...

I'd like to see the traceroute hops.

Re:A Space Router! Wowzers!

[TwistedSquare]

Does that mean all the hackers will have to send their malicious code written in this?

Re:Ping Time

[McSpew]

It would be around 270ms for a satellite in geosynchronous orbit. It would be a bit more for a router on the moon. :)

That's a one-way trip. Meaning that traffic only goes to the satellite and back to earth once. That's great if you've got some sort of instrumented satellite up there and you're trying to query it for data, or if you're broadcasting (one way). But because this thing's a router, that implies that traffic will be two-way.

This means you're going to have that minimum 270ms lag on the outbound leg, but you've got to take into account the return trip, which doubles the minimum latency to 540ms (that's a half-second to you and me). If there's even typical latency on the terrestrial side (at both ends), you're probably talking another 50-60ms, so a typical ping time will most likely be 600ms or more.

Of course, this assumes that the space router satellite will be placed in geosynchronous orbit., but there's nothing in TFA to indicate that's how it'll be used. It might be placed in a lower orbit, as part of a constellation of satellites, the way Teledesic had planned to do, in which case, the latency would be much lower.

telnet open anyone

[kipple]

In other news, many l33t hax0rs will start turning their satellite dishes around hoping to sniff the admin password of the space router. God bless the telnet.
(and the password will be cisco/space)

Giant-Ass Cantenna...

[catdevnull]

What would the SSID be for that bad boy?

• Bush Clan LAN
• RummyNet
• 0wn3d by Osama

Hmmm....redifines War Driving!

Obligatory cluster reference?

[hellfire]

What? Not one mention of how nice it would be to have a beowulf cluster of those in orbit? You people are slipping...

Re:Obligatory cluster reference?

[badmammajamma]

Please...the proper response on /. is "how long till someone gets linux running on it?"

Re:Obligatory cluster reference?

[rbabb]

Wouldn't it be called Load Balancing?????

Space P0rn

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeppie, now we can have space p0rn!!

The Master Plan

[MightyMartian]

The regional governors now have direct control over territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line.

Re:Ping times. / more interestingly

[mgs1000]

Of course alien networks work just like ours. Haven't you seen Independence Day?

Charm?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Please God... Thou has made me bald and without
> charm. Pleae give this one thing.

You underestimate the allure of a good sense of humor.

And chill. Yes, I'm a chick. ;)

Re:Charm?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I'm a chick. ;)

How YOU doin? ;)

So...

[netsfr]

that's where the Intelsat went... Finders Keepers!

IPv4 is insecure?

[mnmn]

Is that why the Internet works?

IPv4 simply routes data. Its not supposed to be secure, at least until IPSec. Usually for electromagnetic waves the layer 2 protocol provides the encryption, and everything above it works as normal. Thats the simplest and most reliable implementation. Trying to encapsulate routed packets, setting up routing rules to work with it etc gets more complex than defining one layer 2 channel, encrypting it, and letting all layer3 packets route themselves over it.

Thats Why IPSec isnt used much, except in VPNs.

Just encrypt the EM waves, like the military has since WWII. The digital data in the waves can also be encrypted as a part of the layer 2, above of which everything becomes normally routable without much configuration and the device(s) used in such communication can easily be deployed everywhere without fat manuals explaining tunnelling, IP headers, routing rules and the likes.

Re:Ping times. / more interestingly

[bladernr]

Of course alien networks work just like ours. Haven't you seen Independence Day?

I prefer old Star Trek: where all aliens speak English, and alien chicks are always hot and ready to go!

Jim Kirk didn't need some fancy Space Router to get an intergalactic connection... if you know what I mean... *wink*

Why???

[AtariAmarok]

Q. Why a router in space?

A. All the better to ping Uranus with.

why not

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Why not just use pigeons in spacesuits?

This is just one small step...

[Anonymous Coward]

... to NASA setting up a giant pr0n server on the moon.

Hey, it beats begging the government for funding.

ping times

[XO]

Well, if it's in orbit, the ping time will be around 750ms minimum, as it takes about that long for a satellite internet connection to return a ping. About 600ms to go from terrestrial to orbit and back again, + processing time and such.

Now all we need is the P2P satiliate

[Abhorsen]

After all there are no laws in space

Re:Now all we need is the P2P satiliate

[vertinox]

Hrm... You know you just might be on to something.

What if someone sent up a solar powered computer that anyone could establish an internet connection to (with quite a few spare redudant hard drives I might add) into space.

Not like the MPAA and the RIAA they are going to spend the time or money to shoot it down.

However if the OS crashes it's going to be a bitch to reboot.

How do you charge more for a router?

[Aceto3for5]

Router = (n)Dollars
Space = Infinite
SpaceRouter = Infinite(n)Dollars


Login: Admin PW: Admin

NAT hacking...

[Anonymous Coward]

AF Tech: Look at this, someone has hacked the routing table.

Commander: Who is it?

AF Tech: I'm not sure, all space requests on port 80 are being routed to http://www.amazon.space/1click

TDRS?

[Derling Whirvish]

Isn't this what TRDS already does?

Re:TDRS?

[HarveyBirdman]

Pronounced teedris. My parents work on the space segment for TDRSS in, geez, the late 70's? Early 80's? I still have a sticker for the program somewhere.

I imagine it needs an upgrade, yes?

Re:Ping time

[SgtClueLs]

Be a man and don't hide behind Anonymous Coward. You sir are ignorant and a smuck.

Re:wtf?? This is new?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's recieving and then forwarding a TCP/IP session, over a WAN, doesn't that imply it's either a router or a hub of SOME kind? I mean, basically everything is definied as a router, from load balancing routers, to VPN routers..

What's different from a "pass through" and a "router"? Isn't even "software" NAT considered a router?

a little data

[verbs_of_life]

To really understanding this debate it is extremely useful to read Steven Pinker's Book (former MIT guy now at Harvard) the "Blank Slate". In brief his arguements as they apply to this are that there is a lot of data to show many XX beings (women) (but not all) have specific genes related to not so much the ability to do math and science but simply the desire to do it. Seems many (though not all women (many is equal to about 70%) women would rather interact with people rather than "ideas". The science behind this is pretty good and for me compelling. Pinker has a website and answers email so maybe this would make a good slashdot interview.

Re:A Space Router! Wowzers!

[Idarubicin]

They are developing a router which drops everything but whitespace characters.

How do I know when the data have arrived?

This has advantages

[digitalgimpus]

Firefox has the priviliage of saying it's used on all 7 continents (thanks to an Antartic researcher).

Perhaps now we will be able to say Firefox goes into space?

ping time

[Anonymous Coward]

610msec

Re:Ping times. / more interestingly

[EvilTwinSkippy]

That's OK. The Altarian fleet, after a several thousand year journey will arrive on Earth. Only to be swallowed by a small dog.

Ultimate Anti-Hacker Device

[TheMster]

Does it come with nuclear missile launchers to search and destroy DoS attackers as standard? Don't ping flood this motherfucker.

Hard reset!

[Monkey Angst]

Thank God I don't have to support this thing.

"Hi, I'm from the IT department. I need to reset the router. Where is it located?"

Re:Ping Time

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be around 270ms for a satellite in geosynchronous orbit. It would be a bit more for a router on the moon. :)

That's time to ping the satellite itself. To ping another land-based machine through the satellite, double that.

Xtank

[BigYawn]

And now, the question any US general must be wondering:

Will it be fast enough to play xtank online?...

Regarding the InterPlaNetary Internet (IPN)

[kjcole]

Straight from one of the source's mouth, here are a couple of Vint Cerf's resources for the curious:

• Cerf's InterPlaNetary Internet PowerPoint presentation at the National Technology Hall of Fame, March 31, 2004
• Other resources from Cerf's Up

real world ping time for satellite provider.

[draggy]

NetRange: 67.142.0.0 - 67.143.255.255
CIDR: 67.142.0.0/15
NetName: DIRECPC-1BLK

64 bytes from 67.143.xx.xx: icmp_seq=2 ttl=48 time=795.935 ms
64 bytes from 67.143.xx.xx: icmp_seq=3 ttl=48 time=787.073 ms

traceroute:
13 dpc6682016222.direcpc.com (66.82.16.222) 47 ms
14 67.143.xx.xx 780ms

Pinging Elvis...

[The_Real_MrRabbit]

%ping elvis

elvis is

is

is

alive

%

All your space packets

[Anonymous Coward]

All your space packets are belog to us!

Re:wtf?? This is new?

[ebrandsberg]

to clarify, this is about reducing latency by processing the packets as IP in space, as opposed to as bits on a communication channel. In today's solutions, you have to transmit to a base station, that routes, and would have to transmit the data AGAIN to the satellite to reach another point on the satellite network. Some math may clear up the difference:

today: Point A wants to talk to point B over a satellite network. Point A transmits a bit to sattelite, it is sent to point C (base station), routed to point B's communications channel, then transmited again to the sattelite, then to point B. Assuming 1/8 of a second for each leg, this means it takes 1/2 second for the bit to go from point A to point B. A round trip will take 1 second.

with router in space: Point A transmits bit to satellite. Satellite determines bit needs to go to point B, and routes it, and transmits directly to point B. Total time for bit to go from A to B: 1/4 of a second, or half the time. The satellite's bandwidth for IP communications is now effectively doubled as well for such communications.

Make sense?

starband?

[brainchill]

isn't starband a sat router? I mean they are routing IP packets via satellite are they not? It is 2-way sat broadband

Why Humans?

[Cokebottle308]

Can you say I.P.-based pilots? "...192.168.0.123, you're a bit high and off slope..."

Mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up! The author hit the nail on the head for the term "warfighter"

What about the Space Aliens?

[Lawrence_Bird]

Will they get their own class B net? What about the Intergalactic Federation?

And will ICANN be in chage of .space registrations?

We could now SPAM...

[unixguy48]

goatse out to our alien overlords and they could then experience the frustration of OUR Internet.

The way our military works

[kurt555gs]

The router will support Gopher as it's main protocol.

Why are all things the US government does always so far behind comercial development?

Oh well , it's just the way it is.

Dual purpose

[murr]

I suppose the Ethernet cable for the uplink could serve as a space elevator as well.

Wonder no more..

[da3dAlus]

"I wonder what the ping times would be like..."

Astronomical!

[...cricket...]

Aw, c'mon, "space-hardened IP router"...astronomical? Eh, fine, you make a better joke.

Currently Use Sattelite

[marco0009]

I live in rural Texas and use a sattelite to connect to the net. I don't know how they expect to be able to fight a war with this when I can't even play a first person shooter due to the response time :p On the current sattelite (Starband) I get about 80-90k/s down with an abysmal 2k/s up.

I'm sure their router will be faster, but my interest has been piqued and I want to see how much faster so I can mail Starband en masse in attempt to get my bandwith increased :)

Mod Parent Up!

[Anonymous Coward]

It is Insightful, Informative, Funny, and Underrated all at the same time.

That is, unless you have spent time with the USAF, in which case it would be Redundant.

Reassembling TCP/IP in space?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are they using TCP/IP? I would imagine that the long distances in space and inconsistant interferance would make having a stateful transport layer a real bitch! (or at least require your network stack to do lots more reassembly and retransmission) How long do you set your socket timeout for in space, 9 minutes?

I guess TCP/IP wouldn't be that big of a challange.. but it probably will be a waste of spectrum. Oh well.

Part of me is happy that they are using standards-based technology to start off this Onternet (get it? orbital-Internet?), but I can't help but be skeptical, given the US administration's plans for warfare and SAT destruction now that the rest of the world can make rockets too.

Warfighter as euphemism

[doodlelogic]

Of course it just means "soldier", but that is un-PC because it reminds you that there is a real person there that might die.

Warfighter just sounds like a robot.

Re:wtf?? This is new?

[srvivn21]

Double hop routing is already solved... Here's an example. Notice the text about "...can support star, mesh or hybrid network topologies..."? Any site can "talk" directly to any other.

While I'm not the original poster, I'm still at a loss as for what advantage this development gives.

Air Force Pilots...

[twoes00]

Maybe they'll fly higher... In an attempt to get better wireless signal! hah!

Well..

[StikyPad]

wonder what the ping times would be like...

I'm guessing oh, say the speed of light times twice the distance to the satellite, with a few microseconds added on for processing delays. Just a guess. The Air Force still can't overcome physics. The Marines, on the other hand...

Currently a STUDY and NOT exclusive to NG

[Anonymous Coward]

The contract will be awarded to the defense contractor with the best demonstrated solution at the beginning of 2007. We'll see at that time whether it goes to NG or Boeing.

Bonus Question: How many satellite programs with "processing payloads" has each company built to date?

NG: 2
BSS: 4

Didn't Iridium do this already?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, maybe not IP based, but it does have a many satellite constellation configuration, has a QoS, and does satellite to satellite routing, and is rad hard, and is likely ground updateable, and..., so why is this so novel?

Router prompt

[Anonymous Coward]

Cisco Internetwork Operating System Software
IOS (tm) 8500 Software (C8500-I-M), Version 14.2(24a), RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc3)
G.703/E1 software, Version 1.0.
Bridging software.
X.25 software, Version 3.0.0.

Would you like to play a game?
#_

Reliability...

[L0k11]

Is essential because thats a hell of a long way to go to pull the plug out and put it back in when your ADSL stops working...

Integrated circuit material also matters...

[zerofoo]

My dad used to work on communication satellites for Lockheed Martin aerospace. They used to radiation harden integrated circuits by designing them on GaAs (Gallium Arsenide) material instead of plain old silicon.

My guess is these guys will be re-designing standard routers with GaAs ICs.

-ted

Damn!

[Xcapee]

Just when IPv6 seems to be getting going - we're going need more address bits. Do you know how BIG space is?

Noone modded this stuff up?

[Watersharer]

Quantum Entanglement isn't science fiction.

http://www.setileague.org/editor/darcy.htm

It's real, duplicatable, and apparently gonna be well funded. The idea of a nearly lag-free global Internet, owned and operated by the US Airforce, just makes me all warm and tingly inside.

Any takers on the recent space pictures getting transmitted back real time? Proof of concept works, ask for funding boys!

Ping pong times

[Pan T. Hose]

"I wonder what the ping times would be like..."

They could tell you, but then they'd have to kill you.

I remember some old jokes when we were working on a really high latency experimental network (ip over fidonet) and we were talking about ping pong times. We would ping a distant server and start playing ping pong. The sum of our scores when we got an icmp reply was our "ping pong time." At that time I would have never thought that such a high latency will eventually be one of the most serious problems in the 21st century, but the sad thing is that when we have people on Mars, a simple irc chat or a phone call will be impossible, not becasue of our technology like back in my days, but because of the speed of light itself. It's funny that we don't have flying cars but we face problems caused by the slow speed of light...

Maybe they should hire these guys

[hcdejong]

SkyCorp planned to launch PowerMacs into orbit as web servers. Then again, nothing has been heard from them since the announcement...

Tactical sub-orbital communications (links/URLs)

[OldHawk777]

I would suspect, a USA military tactical sub-orbital communications platform, which most terrorist or developing nations with shoulder/ground launch missiles could not destroy or cause service interruptions to be in the works.

Other /.'ers and myself mentioned this stuff (including MilTransport) 5+ years ago before DoD/USAF looked. About the time CargoLifter AG cranked up in EU-Germany on 1996/09/01.

Check out: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/air craft/skycat.htm
Check out: http://www.worldskycat.com/
Check out: http://www.worldskycat.com/markets/skycom.html
Ch eck out: http://www.aerospace-technology.com/projects/cargo lifter

I live 40mi South of NYC, USA ... in a heavily populated area ..., I still hope one day to get Internet/phone service above narrowband (65Kb/s+) to (2Mb/s) wideband ... (5Mb/s) ultra-wideband, and (2M-3Gb/s) broadband is just a Telco BS marketing term that in reality most USA citizens may not see for another 5 to 10 years, and will continue to pay way to much for considering the "QUALITY".

High-Altitude sub-orbital communications platforms may be the (last mile) way for WLL/FSW ... WiMax ... to get to the home of all USA citizens in the future. I look forward to gaming (no satellite delay) online at 60yo+ if the Telcos remain in control of the FCC and Congress. It is like (years ago) when the tobacco companies' CEOs told Congressional and Senate members that cigarettes are not addictive and do not cause cancer according to their research.

Re:wtf?? This is new?

[sammyno55]

I pinged through a satellite daily when in the military. Very noticable lag.

Satellites are a last-mile solution, not general.

[Behrooz]

that almost invariably takes the data through at least one satellite somewhere

Negative. Satellite bandwidth is several orders of magnitude more expensive than wired bandwidth. Unless you're communicating with someone in an exceptionally remote area where satellite transmission is the only means of communication with the outside world-- Antarctica, other isolated research stations, ships more than 50km offshore, or *extremely* remote areas in 3rd world countries... well, you're talking over wires and fiber.

That said, pingtime to LEO isn't bad at all. Unfortunately, pingtime to higher orbits gets progressively worse... geosynch is more than a sixth of a light second out from Earth, and it makes sense to have communications satellites up at GEO because they don't move and avoid a lot of the space-junk in the crowded lower orbits.

Here are some rough estimates of what a satellite hop would add to your pingtimes.

Digital LEO satellite relay: +20ms
Analog LEO satellite relay: +80ms
Digital GEO satellite relay: +380ms
Analog GEO satellite relay: +440ms

Space Router Protocols

[Dark Coder]

A typical Space router's store-n-forward protocols to choose from:

1. ZMODEM over LLC
2. TTCP over X.28
3. ATM over Psuedo-space-wire
4. Novell over IPX

Never underestimate the bandwidth power of a space shuttle carrying 20,000 DVD-Rs.

Re:wtf?? This is new?

[ebrandsberg]

from what I gather, the "star" topology is about setting up discrete communication channels that can then communicate. This would assume that you know the destination beforehand. The new solution would allow a single communciations channel to be setup and used to route to several locations in an optimal fashion, so that it reduces overhead and management issues.

Re:wtf?? This is new?

[srvivn21]

I was always under the impression that a star topology is one where you have a central hub connecting a bunch of outlying points. To get from one outlying site to another, you have a double hop: once to get from the originating site to the hub, and another to get from the hub to the destination.

With a mesh, all sites are directly connected, giving you a single hop (originating site to destination site).

The linkway product allows a mesh network. As I read the article, that's all this "space router" will do as well. *shrug*

OffTopic: DirecWay and MythTv

[tommck]

Hi. I ran across another post of yours here and was wondering if you are still using an SSH tunnel to download your TV listings. If not, what is the new solution? I am installing now, and just realized I can't download the TV listings. Thinking about modding the code to loop "wget -c" into a temp file (seems to fix timeouts with wget for me).

Please email me at @gmail.com and let me know. I'd appreciate it.

Tom