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First Ethernet Switch In Space
Rebecca will you marry me? writes "The ESA's Columbus laboratory module was added to the International Space Station in February, but Hewlett-Packard has only now chosen to reveal that the LAN onboard Columbus uses a ProCurve 2524 switch." HP admits it was the "most unusual and demanding" project ProCurve has done yet.
From TFA: "Two redundant LAN switches, developed by the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) Astrium, already operate in the ISS network core and now have been joined by HP's ProCurve 2524 switch"
;)
I sent this in an e-mail to Taco when the article was still in the 'mysterious future' but that message must have been stopped by his spam filter or something.
Yeah yeah, I must be new here
Extended G-forces during launch might be a good test of how well solder joints, connectors, and other components are made.
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Semiconductors generally don't like high-radiation environments, such as outer space. Hence the normal use of specially made high-$$$ "rad-hard" components in space systems.
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Heat is not removed from components by airflow because warm air doesn't rise in zero gravity. This means forced convection has to reach more places.
The Amateur Radio satellites went to an Ethernet backbone some time ago - over a decade IIRC.
Shuttle flight computer uses the 386 double sigma.
here are some other notes:
http://klabs.org/DEI/Processor/shuttle/
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Actually it's the US segment of ISS that uses the 386 based machines (although a couple may go to Pentiums in a few years).
The Orbiter uses the AP-101S, which was also used in military aircraft. NASA has a great deal of published history online regarding Shuttle Avionics here.
Worst...sig...ever!
You can't be serious. Almost every enterprise Ethernet switch has fans. Including the terrestial model of the ProCurve 2524.
You are absolutely correct, which is why nothing on these networks is something on which life depends.
I'm going to greatly simplify this, but there are basically three networks onboard the space station. One is mostly off the shelf laptops and networking equipment that runs Windows and is used for crew support (email, procedures, timelines, photos, and such). It frequently needs maintenance, but it does the job. It's also (relatively) easy to certify and plug new hardware into it, so it can be updated frequently as commercial technology advances (for example, later this year the Thinkpad A31p laptops will be swapped out for newer models).
The second is a payload ethernet network that is used by the payload system to collect and downlink high volume data through the USOS Ku-band system. Failure of this network only impacts science collection and some support activities. These switches are part of this network. The standards are more stringent, but not to the level of stuff on which safety or mission success depends.
The third network is the core computer system, which is all custom built hardware/software wired up with MIL-STD 1553 data bus. This is the network which runs the core vehicle systems (life support, attitude control, what have you). The hardware and software are developed to a much more rigorous standard than the first two networks (and it obviously costs a lot more and is slower to update because the the long pole of certification and testing). Some of the machines on this network have been chugging along for nearly a decade without failure.
Worst...sig...ever!