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.

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.