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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
they aren't using Linksys routers as well. Password: defaultshuttle
http://www.space.com/spacenews/archive04/ciscoarch_042104.html
Excellent, that should triple the resale value of my Procurve 2512 switch. Any offers?
Is there some reason why a router in orbit would behave differently in any way from a router sitting in a rack in the server room? (Other than floating, etc.)
Makes one think more about all the radiation crewmembers get exposed to as well, even within the protective embrace of the Earth's magnetic field. That's one of the big hurdles to travel to Mars of course; long term exposure to varying levels of radiation (mostly from the Sun).
I just think it's geeky-cool that they put them in a particle accellerator for testing though.
I see a job opportunity for a network engineer, or at the very least a network cabling repair guy. Imagine that help desk ticket @ NASA.......
My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my Father! Prepare to die!
He's a nerd! Save yourself Rebecca!
;) )
(before you mod OT look at submission again
twitter.com/gravitronic
HP are bottom-of-the-barrel outsourcers now. Trusting HP to provide networking equipment for the space station would be a scaling up of trusting me, an amateur electronics geek, to build radio receivers for emergency workers. I know I can build working kit and I'm fairly cheap, but I've never had to begin contemplating the construction of gear that needs to be so reliable that great efforts will be wasted and people will probably die if I get it wrong. Neither AC's Shack nor HP Procurve switches are designed to "people will die if you fuck up" spec - that's what military spec is for, and that's why people pay extra for it.
A strong tutting to the Europeans for once again demonstrating that they're no less willing to compromise if a company in desperate need of good PR is willing to slip them a few pennies.
In space, no one can hear the NIC scream.
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
Do they have a mailing address?
The Amateur Radio satellites went to an Ethernet backbone some time ago - over a decade IIRC.
... that was relieved and surprised it wasn't "hub" and "10Base2"?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
10Mbit switch? Am I the only one who thought "Gee, I would have though NASA could have afforded at least 100Mbit!"
The only reason I can come up with is the possibility of higher packet loss with all of the radiation. Does anyone know for sure?
Seriously... zero-g has no effect on this equipment. Yes it has to have more radiation shielding and has to be shock mounted to survive the launch but other that it could be an iPod or a DirectTV DVR. There's nothing innovative about this. They shot an ethernet switch into space... big deal. Call me when someone invents a way to use quantum entanglement to communicate faster than light. That's news.
Unless they suffer from congestion.
You ever ship anything UPS? If it survive *them*, launching into orbit should be a no-brainer.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
> http://formyrebecca.blogspot.com/
When i read this, i felt the need to puke. This guy says he is together with his girlfriend for two years and want to marry her but yet he does still not know what she likes. And in order to find out he shows a total lack of integrity and installs a keylogger on her machine! This is a cruel break of trust. I really hope she finds out and tosses him. This is imho absolutely sick behaviour. And whats even worse that he apparently is even proud of his act of dishonesty and blogs about it.
Wasn't the first network for the ISS based on Token-ring? I participated in an Ethernet vs Token-ring RFP in the mid-80's against IBM and we lost the bid. We didn't play golf as well.
The general assumption in the company was that that NASA was using Cisco routers and switches in the International Space Station. I volunteered to be the on-site SE.
So I doubt that the ProCurve switch is the first ethernet switch in space.
Delay Tolerant Internet (or DTN) is the current version of Vint Cerf's
"Interplanetary Internet" - basically, making a TCP-like protocol in situations where there may be long delays and no end-to-end connectivity. I thought that there was a test of this on a shuttle flight but cannot find a link, Vint Cerf last year talked about a test in 2010.
To me, that is a lot more interesting than just having a switch in LEO.
I've ordered equipment I didn't like and had to replace. The ISS doesn't really have such extraordinary environmental requirements as much as the price up screwing up is so much higher. At about $10K per pound, that's about 2000X as expensive as UPS for "shipping and handling".
http://www.futron.com/pdf/resource_center/white_papers/FutronLaunchCostWP.pdf
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Also from TFA: The switch underwent three years of development, configuration and qualification testing before it journeyed into space.
Huh?
Hmm wonder if it would with stand an emp blast.
Tell me the only network up will be hp switches, I'll just kill myself now.
Won't someone think of the child molesters?
in style!
I am sure the OP's implication is not that "creating child pornography by taking photographs or videos of children being abused" is a thought crime. The thought crime occurs when one is punished merely for possessing such images, on the assumption that he or she is aroused. Possessing a photograph or video of a non-sexual physical assault, or a murder, is not against the law.
.mac of little Gemma in her first bathing costume. But they're not safe from Uncle Jim.
Another thought crime occurs in the UK when a scene depicting sexual activity with a child is created without actually involving any children - e.g. 3d rendering or adult actresses with youthful features. This is illegal, and the only "offence" as such is in fantasising that some real abuse has occurred. Possessing a film in which a physical assault, or a murder, is acted out, or drawing a picture of such activity, is not against the law.
By targeting those who abuse children or, as a second priority, those who actually pay for the products of abuse, children are helped. But targeting those who merely possess images - real, acted or sketched - is helping child abusers, by occupying resources that should be used to track, arrest and lock up the abusers, and rehabilitate the victims. It is also perpetuating a broken system of rights, in which a man is punished for having a sequence of bits in a particular order on his hard drive; it misdiagnoses paedophilia as a crime rather than a disorder, making it harder to deal with paedophiles; it perpetuates the myth that child abusers are likely to be men lurking in the shady corners of the Internet, when an abused child is almost always abused by a family member or close family friend.
Put another way, to pursue the mere possession of child pornography will inevitably result in a society where child abuse is more likely to go unchecked, and where freedoms in general are curtailed. Thousands of paedophiles right now are thinking about violating children like your young son or daughter, but just as millions of heterosexual men fantasise about adult women every day without raping them, so too are your children safe from fantasy; they're also safe from people half way around the world who are masturbating furiously over a photoshopping of a pic you put up on
And I'm sorry for going off on a rant, but "how do you deal with child porn" is pretty much the ultimate question for testing someone's scope of rationality and freedom. I'm from Spain, which hasn't even reached the stage of understanding why I should be allowed to carry a gun and my neighbor is allowed to describe me by combining simple sounds denoted by letters s,p,i,c without being locked in a cell.
The Russians used a pencil
Passive cooling doesn't work in space. Here on earth hot air will rise away from a hot component, but in 0G it acts like an insulator and blankets to component in heat.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
Why?
These are switches for whom spanning tree is a foreign concept. They claim to support it, but default set up out of the box seems to be if you put 2 crossover cables between 2 procurve switches it will create a switching loop rather than disable one. Not a great idea when our product relies heavily on multicast. It took me a few minutes to figure out why the CPU usage on a workstation that I had just plugged in and hadn't installed anything on was at like 50-60% within about 2 minutes because I wasn't expecting this kind of basic issue on new equipment...
These were new switches out of the box, only a few months ago.
Are you telling me NASA couldn't afford Cisco?
When I worked for state government we were relocating the I.T. unit along with a few other units to a new building. I evaluated Cisco, and HP products and settled on an HP4108 switch. It still works flawlessly.
First off, We use hp switches at work and we have procurve 4000 switches that have been running for a while with no problems. we also bought newer(at the time) 4100 switches and they havent had any problems either. also this switch had to go through 3 years of testing. thats why it may seem obsolete now.
There already has been a WRT54GL with IPv6 in space iirc.
I think you ought to know I am feeling very depressed...
It says you have LifeTime warranty, as long as "you own the device", with
> Next-business-day delivery of a replacement unit for the entire warranty period (available in many locations around the world)
I'd like to see that, really.
What better place to use the Ultra Premium Denon Link Cable? Comments here please.
Does i get moderated offtopic?
Whomever modded me: I actually am very on-topic. Check the article's first line. Its just wrong on so many ways. And then there's the other comments. And the article.
And me losing faith in certain fond aspects of humanity.
Hivemind harvest in progress..