Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Vint Cerf Preps Interplanetary Internet Protocol

Posted by timothy on from the would-be-helpful-at-the-jupiter-hotel-too dept.

TechFiends32 writes "After years of working with NASA to bring Internet connectivity to deep space, scientists say Vint Cerf's efforts may be nearing completion. To combat the apparent challenges of extending the Internet into space (such as meteors and weighty, high-powered antennas), Cerf and others have made significant efforts, like adjusting satellite-based IP, and working on delay-tolerant networking (DTN) to address pure IP's limitations in space. According to principal engineer at The Mitre Corp., Keith Scott, 'The 2010 goal is designed to bring DTN to a sufficient level of maturity to incorporate it into designs for robotic and human lunar exploration.'"

5 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Caching would be great here too by dk90406 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yes, caching seems very nice. But the article don't explain how they'll handle the huge latency. It must have a huge floating windows for ACK/retransmits.
    On a less serious hand, I hope the satellite IP connections are severed from the Ethernet (like electrical plants are (or should be in some cases), or hacking a satellite will be the next goal.

  2. mooncam by nblender · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I can't wait for the very first webcam on the moon; to see a live earthrise, etc ...

    1. Re:mooncam by Kingrames · · Score: 3, Interesting

      "Earthrise" is the name given to the famous picture taken of the earth from the moon. You have most likely seen it, it's the most famous picture of the Earth.

      Africa is prominently visible in the picture, if you're curious.

      --
      If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
  3. From TFA by scubamage · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "Reliability in DTN is provided by a mechanism called custody transfer, where nodes in the network can assume responsibility for retransmitting lost messages. This allows for retransmissions from inside the network rather than having to retransmit data from the source, as is the case with TCP." Hmmm, sounds like DoS just got a whole lot easier. Instead of having to get nasty at an endpoint, you could attack a single router and have everything get all kinds of wonky. I understand why they want to do it this way, but the seperation of responsibility was put there for a reason in TCP waaaaay back in the DARPA days so that if any link goes down you have no data loss. What happens if critical data is being transmitted from a source, and the source gets cut off. The retransmitting router gets hit by a meteor and is trashed. Critical data loss. Am I missing something?

    1. Re:From TFA by 644bd346996 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You seem to be extrapolating quite a bit to say that this scheme is much more vulnerable to critical data loss. (And your claim about DoS is pretty irrelevant when you consider that all implementations of this protocol will be owned by NASA and their associates.)

      Do you really think, based on just TFA, that Vint Cerf of all people would design such a flawed protocol? The point of custody transfer is that retransmissions can be handled by the routers that form the network, rather than wasting precious power using a planetside rover that has better things to do.