Building the Interplanetary Internet

sighted writes "Internet pioneer Vint Cerf, now a Google VP, is leading a NASA effort to create a permanent network link to Mars within the next two years. As Cerf outlined in a recent talk, the 'InterPlaNet' protocol is designed to handle the delay caused by interplanetary distances. A signal traveling between the Earth and Mars can take up to 20 minutes."

Comments

Priorities

[Phisbut]

Parts of this planet we live on don't even have access to a broadband Internet connection, and now they want to plug Mars on the network? Talk about priorities...

Re:Priorities

[Archangel Michael]

Because we all know that we can't do both at the same time ....

Re:Priorities

[dcskier]

Parts of this planet don't have broadband yet for economic reasons, this is more of a technical problem to solve. Apples and Oranges.

It makes sense to be looking and working towards the future, this sounds like an interesting project.

Re:Priorities

[Washizu]

What are you doing to connect rural societies? You're just sitting here commenting on slashdot! Talk about priorities...

Re:Priorities

[MightyYar]

It's probably political as much as economic. Many countries have government-granted monopolies for their phone companies, and these lumbering monopolists have little reason to change the infrastructure.

Add to that the class of nations run by people who find it convenient to keep the populace ignorant (China, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, etc), and you have a practically insurmountable problem, no matter how much money is diverted from NASA to broadband connections for the unconnected.

Re:Priorities

[Macka]

Amazing isn't it. As a UK citizen I used to think that America was this democratic utopia of free trade, where healthy competition between companies resulted in the best deal for customers anywhere. I mean, your prices are so much lower than ours, so it must work right?

I remember first becoming aware that things weren't quite right when (several years ago) I read about the dysfunctional state of the cell phone network across the USA, and the fact that I could send SMS messages to come people, but not to others because of interoperability's between network vendors. Then I learned about the draconian restrictions the cell phone networks place on their customers, like multi-year tie in clauses and crippled phone functionality.

But the scales really got knocked from my eyes when the California blackouts happened in 2000, caused by Enron's manipulative energy trading. People died because of that. What a mess!

Now I read about this. What went wrong guys? Capitalism was never supposed to be as f*cked up as this.

Re:Priorities

[Paulrothrock]

Capitalism isn't supposed to be anything except profitable. It's not supposed to provide services well. It's not supposed to interoperate well. It's not even supposed to keep people alive. It is supposed to maximize profits by any means necessary.

Re:Priorities

[antifoidulus]

Have you ever been out to the rural parts of your country? Here in Bavaria(which was a part of West Germany) broadband is FAR from universal. Ditto for cell phone signal. Some towns just don't have it, and someone at Deutsche Telekom told me that they pretty much never will. The "fact" that broadband and cellphone coverage is "universal" in western Europe is nothing but a myth. Europeans just refuse to admit their system isn't perfect either. Probably just because they like feeling sanctimonious, but thats just my opinion.Also, in all the time I lived in the US I NEVER had a problem with sending SMS messages. I don't know what carrier you were using, but obviously you didn't do your research.

And if you want to talk about negligence killing people, how about the heat wave that hit France in 2003? Many of those deaths were preventable, but French labor law prevented physicians from working longer hours. So going too far in the opposite direction kills people too.

Re:Priorities

[kv9]

What went wrong guys? Capitalism was never supposed to be as f*cked up as this.

slashdot wisdom

Re:Priorities

[Millennium]

What went wrong guys? Capitalism was never supposed to be as f*cked up as this.

You answered your own question: the capitalism got f*cked up. Capitalism only works as long as there is competition in a given market. When a company achieves monopoly status, it loses its incentive to improve, stagnation rears its head, and eventually ugly stuff like the things you've mention occur.

What's been going on more recently is not so much an issue of true monopolies, but more like a series of agreements between companies that allow them to act as though they were monopolies even if there's more than one in the market. About a hundred years ago we used to call these agreements trusts. This is where the term "antitrust legislation" comes from: a set of regulations aimed at stopping this sort of anticompetitive behavior, thus keeping monopolies and trusts from usurping the power of the markets. It's one of the points where regulation really can be a useful tool of capitalism.

Unfortunately, recent administrations have been less than zealous enough when it comes to enforcing these regulations. Bush the Younger is not the only one to blame for this, though he's certainly the latest one in the bunch. Clinton wasn't so good about it either (the Microsoft trial notwithstanding), nor was Bush the Elder, and while Reagan had his moments most of those were relatively early in his tenure.

Open protocol

[everphilski]

This would be a protocol that would bind in with TCP/IP. Former space missions used protocols invented by the companies that built the hardware, not necessarily a common framework. This should change all that...

Re:Ping

[Coffee Warlord]

We have a colony on Mars, but we're STILL using IPV4. God help us. :)

Re:It's easier

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

I'm not aware of any places except maybe near the North or South Poles where people don't have access to two-way satellite Internet like DirectPC.

Yes, ping times for games might be crappy, but downloads are quite speedy once you get going (though "chatty" stuff with lots of small messages like Peer-to-Peer also can suck.)

Again, it's economics. I suppose you'll be able to find political hack whiners claiming $80 a month is a "huge ripoff, the gubmint must get involved"; nevermind the investments made to bring it in at that price rather than billions, millions, or even thousands a month.

ob Sealab 2021

[servognome]

come on down to Lab 6 and play for real!

Lab 6 is jerks!

Re:What is the maximum latency for communication?

[PitaBred]

GMT offset of Mars... let's see, carry the one... I'd say about i ?

Re:talking without delays using quantum entangleme

[kalidasa]

Because any energy you apply to either particle of an entangled pair disentangles them. There is no Royal Road to the Ansible through entanglement.

Re:So P2P now means planet-2-planet ;)

[PieSquared]

The Outer Space Treaty says no.... but will that really hold when people start trying to develop commercial interests outside earth? It doesn't deal with private industry very well, pretty much saying their gov't is responsible for them.

Moreover I have to assume that eventually people will actually begin to *live* on mars. First just to work, sending money back, but eventually bringing families over and having kids and such... and at that point they'll start thinking about making a new country. And then what... as a country outside earth would they have a right to have a military presence, something forbidden to countries who signed the outer space treaty?

Basically I'm saying that someday it'll fail, the only question is how soon. Legally we can withdraw from it with one year warning, which is plenty of time to still be first to mars by decades, probably.