Vint Cerf Preps Interplanetary Internet Protocol

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.'"

Comments

Caching would be great here too

[Sybert42]

Cool stuff. The caching mechanisms to make information even remotely useful would be great back here on Earth. I hate even a few hundred milliseconds of delay when flipping from page to page. Google of course has a rediculously low latency seemingly in both transmission and server-side processing. I'm going to try and download the huge Wikipedia database and see if I can get it working completely locally. Click, click, click. No waiting, no flipping pages. At some point you need to start bundling large amounts of data to a local proxy.

Re:Caching would be great here too

[dk90406]

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.

Re:Caching would be great here too

[Anonymous Coward]

aw, shit. now goatcx will be trolled into outer space, giving a new meaning to the term black hole.

Re:Caching would be great here too

[jandrese]

The trick is that you don't have to use TCP as your transport layer. DTN bundles can be transmitted over UDP, NORM, sneakernet, carrier pigeon, or anything else you can write a convergence layer for. Since DTN abstracts away the lower levels, each hop can use the transport layer that is most appropriate, like TCP on an internet hop, SCPS on a satellite hop, etc...

More information is available on the DTN Research Group's homepage: http://dtnrg.org.

Re:Caching would be great here too

[AKAImBatman]

I think you're missing the point. The general idea here is to have a packet switched communications system throughout the solar system. That way if a probe is in the shadow of, say, Jupiter, it can bounce a signal off a probe orbiting Venus, which will relay the signal back to Earth.

The end result would be a more robust communications system. In the future, interplanetary communications satellites could even end up doing most of the grunt-work, thus allowing probes and manned spacecraft to carry smaller communications packages designed to work with the network rather than broadcasting in as many conditions as possible.

such a network would also be useful for astronauts on another planet or meteor. Rather than setting up a communications station, they can use orbiting satellites to relay their transmissions. (Something which NASA already does on a smaller scale with probes like the Mars rovers.)

Re:Caching would be great here too

[HolyCrapSCOsux]

I'd like to put a few people in space, sans suit.

Re:Caching would be great here too

[jandrese]

Caching is very useful in space. What happens when your satellite orbits around to the other side of Mars? You have several hours of no-communication and have to store everything you were going to send (and people on the other end have to store what they were going to send to you).

Re:Caching would be great here too

[The Master Control P]

Putting lots of people somewhere not earth is insurance in the event we screw up too badly on earth. Putting all your eggs in this single, fragile basket is a bad idea.

Re:Caching would be great here too

[SignOfZeta]

Since you know, with the way things are going, some astronaut is going to buy an iPhone 3G. Then they'll show it to their co-workers, and their co-workers might get one.

And then it's only a matter of time before Apple starts getting support calls from astronauts wondering why there's no signal.

And then AT&T (or whomever is in your country) will get support calls about how there's no signal in space.

And then some astronaut's 14-year-old cousin will make a cantenna out of a Pringles can, wire it to his home access point, and point it straight up. There must be a better way, and that's what good old Vint Cerf has been up to.

Re:Caching would be great here too

[smoker2]

Does this mean I get my NeptuneCam ?
What kind of bandwidth have they got ?

Re:Caching would be great here too

[GBC]

That way if a probe is in the shadow of, say, Jupiter

I think that might be getting a little close to Europa. I seem to recall we weren't meant to go there...

Re:Caching would be great here too

[SEWilco]

Or put the technology in Earth cars and pass data around between vehicles moving around. Send traffic conditions back to the cars behind you, via both the cars behind you and the cars going the other way.

Re:Caching would be great here too

[Minwee]

such a network would also be useful for astronauts on another planet or meteor.

Actually, astronauts on a meteor might appreciate a really good heat shield more than a reliable interplanetary data network.

They might have also appreciated getting _off_ of the meteoroid before it entered the Earth's atmosphere and became a meteor, but it's probably too late for that.

Re:Caching would be great here too

[Teancum]

From what I've read, Mars is in fact the target for the first implementation of this new communication standard. Basically, there is going to be soon so much hardware from so many different countries on Mars that frequency bandwidth is starting to be a significant issue. Assuming that this is a trend of things to come and not a momentary fluke of current planetary exploration at the moment, it is quite reasonable to presume that interplanetary communication between the Earth and Mars is only going to become more complex and require more bandwidth in the future.

The days when a solitary spacecraft are the only human artifact transmitting from the major planetary bodies in the Solar System are numbered and may be a historical footnote in the near future. That certainly is the case on Mars at the moment, with another batch of spacecraft already on their way to Mars even as we speak.

If people ever get to Mars, expect this to only get much worse in terms of bandwidth needs.

Re:Caching would be great here too

[Teancum]

Or put the technology in Earth cars and pass data around between vehicles moving around. Send traffic conditions back to the cars behind you, via both the cars behind you and the cars going the other way.

This already exists on the Earth. A simple 802.11 wireless router can easily transmit this sort of information between cars and send traffic conditions up and down the highway. All that would be needed to finish the idea is a good application data protocol to identify what information you want to share, and how to protect privacy of individual vehicles that don't want to be broadcasting that they are speeding or "breaking the law" in a manner that today normally wouldn't be prosecuted or even monitored by law enforcement agencies without this technology.

What is under discussion here is the underlying communication protocol, which is a couple of layers down in the protocol stack. Another vehicle on the freeway... or for that matter anywhere on any freeway on the Earth... would still have a communications latency of well less than 1 second. Working with space-based communication where "ping" times of minutes or hours happen changes the whole picture and why this really is a whole different kind of communications issue.

Re:Caching would be great here too

[Teancum]

I think that an astronaut might really appreciate a good reliable interplanetary data network far more than a good heat shield.

Currently, the "Deep Space Network" that has been the communication system for dealing with space-based communications requires "tasking" parts of the network for each mission that is "out there" working.

One of the problems with the Viking spacecraft and currently the Voyager spacecraft was that it required paying salaries of individuals to orient the ground-based equipment receiving these signals on the Earth, not to mention that while the parabolic communications dishes were used for those missions they couldn't be used for other projects. These space probes are still "working" so far as they are still transmitting data, but the ground receivers are being used for other missions that are deemed to be of much higher priority.

Assuming that this system was to be used into the future when there are thousands of people in space all trying to send communications to the Earth, this astronaut crew "on the meteor" (meaning a rock small enough not to even be considered an asteroid) would have to wait for a communications channel to be open just to be able to send a message to "mission control"... with incidents like "Houston, we've got a problem" of Apollo 13 being missed because they can't even be heard.

Some substantial improvement in communications standards is certainly needed in situations like this, and the IPN is one way to make communications standards that can adapt to new situations in the future.... not to mention the ability to continue longer-term interplanetary missions if they keep returning data, like the Spirit and Opportunity vehicles on Mars right now.

Re:Caching would be great here too

[AKAImBatman]

I do believe the parent to your post was poking fun at my (rather silly) mistake of referring to an Asteroid as a Meteor. While not necessarily an incorrect usage, it does tend to refer to those rocks that hit the atmosphere and burn up. :-)

Re:Caching would be great here too

[AKAImBatman]

Indeed. I personally think it would be amazing if we could develop a set of standard comsats to spread across the solar system. Want to explore Mars? No problem. We already have a communications infrastructure for you. Explore Europa? We've got sats around Jupiter, too. Throw in some sats traveling along the Interplanetary Superhighway and you've got better coverage than your average cell phone.

I think people tend to underestimate the shear enabling factor of such a communications network. Not only would such a large deployment provide easy access to all our probes and manned missions, but it would pave the way for cheaper, standardized probes and sats. Manufacture anything in sufficient quantity and the price begins to drop. Just the areas of space that the comsats would be exposed to would easily teach us as much about space hardware as the probes we spend 20+ years planning for a single mission!

If people ever get to Mars, expect this to only get much worse in terms of bandwidth needs.

I think Mars was actually the tipping point that helped make this happen. There was some early interest in the project when it was first began, but that interest waned rather quickly. But now that we're sending so much hardware to Mars, the powers that be are looking for solutions.

It's an exciting time for space enthusiasts. Let's just hope that the next President doesn't kill all the progress we're making. :-(

Re:Caching would be great here too

[Minwee]

Actually, it is incorrect usage. Keep that in mind when your house is destroyed and you try to collect on your meteor insurance policy.

Would I make something like this up?

Re:Caching would be great here too

[Minwee]

"meteor" (meaning a rock small enough not to even be considered an asteroid)

This would all become much clearer if you would look that word up. It doesn't mean what you think it means.

Re:Caching would be great here too

[Teancum]

I was trying to give the benefit of the doubt to the parent post.... and not trying to get into a war of semantics like this one.

The "correct" term here would be "Meteoroid" and not "Meteor" as the context of the parent post was trying to imply something smallish that astronauts could look at but not necessarily so large as to imply that it is an asteroid.

These terms are much more fuzzy that you have implied here, and the spectrum of objects ranging from a grain of sand to an O-class star are not nearly so clearly defined as you implying. At what size, for example, does an object stop being just a rock in space and instead is something substantial that it deserves a name? Yeah, there are clearly objects that can be called "a planet" or "a star" with a given size, but the exact boundary for when that happens isn't quite so exact.

More to the point, what is there to look up here?

Re:Caching would be great here too

[Minwee]

What is there to look up? Well, you could start with "Meteor". You could end there too, since that's really the only word under discussion.

If you do, you'll probably learn something like this: "A meteor is the visible path of a meteoroid that enters the Earth's (or another body's) atmosphere, commonly called a shooting star. The visibility is due to the heat produced by the atmospheric entry. A very bright meteor, brighter than the apparent magnitude of Venus, may be called a fireball or bolide.

If a meteoroid survives its transit of the atmosphere to come to rest on the surface, the resulting object is called a meteorite. A meteor striking the Earth or other object may produce an impact crater."

That's a pretty clear definition, and one which is shared by everyone who actually cares about such things.

Now if you will excuse me, we passed the limit of the joke still being funny days ago and are now nearing the absolute physical limit at which it becomes no longer possible to explain the joke without employing some kind of pop-up book or hand puppets.

Re:Caching would be great here too

[Teancum]

I'm not nearly as stupid as you seem to be implying here.

The very definition of a "Meteoroid" is implied from the definitions you just gave... as the "Meteoroid" is what a "Meteor" is before it enters the atmosphere. Geesh! I already accepted the definition you are implying here and attempted to demonstrate what (perhaps) the proper term should have been used.

As I was trying to say, and I'll say it again, I'm trying to not nit pick with the definition as used by the grandparent poster. You are attacking the wrong person here, as I was quoting a previous post before you got all hung up on the semantics here.

More work to be done

[Chris Burke]

I assume then that at some point someone will have to write up a new RFC on "IP Over Space-Avian Carrier"?

Re:More work to be done

[JustOK]

Space Pigeons and Space Snails
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/24/1948205&from=rss

Re:More work to be done

[Teancum]

As funny as it sounds, the IP-over Avian RFPs actually give some interesting insight into the IPN in terms of significant ping times and packet loss.

While the RFCs about avian packet carriers were largely tongue-in-cheek jokes, some of the concepts really did play a role in developing these new practical standards for very long range communications. At the very least, by thinking in terms of avian packet carriers, it is certainly the kind of "out of the box" thinking that allows you to try and pare down the root issues involved with this sort of communication.

What is more concerning is the actual implementation of avian packets.

Re:More work to be done

[Chris Burke]

What is more concerning is the actual implementation of avian packets.

According to the wiki page for it, some LUG actually did it and sent nine "ping" packets and received responses. Pretty hilarious.

KA9Q

[karl.auerbach]

Phil Karn's old KA9Q implementation of TCP (for amateur radio) was designed to accommodate very long delays.

Re:KA9Q

[Anne_Nonymous]

Yes, but who can resist the acronym VoIPIP?

Re:KA9Q

[felipekk]

They should test this on the current data network in Brazil. Internet connections there are a joke.

Re:KA9Q

[Jimbookis]

Phil Karn's old KA9Q implementation of TCP (for amateur radio) was designed to accommodate very long delays.

Only because it takes such a long time to tap out IP packets in morse code.

Re:KA9Q

[ShakaUVM]

Heh, I remember Phil Karn from the days when cable modems were first being deployed in San Diego (he's an engineer at Qualcomm). He wrote the first linux client to allow computers to connect to the cable modem network (this being back in the days when roadrunner required a weird login application), and was also pretty active on the local USENET forum for RR... also wrote some papers on how to make nuclear weapons or something... good times, good times...

Weird seeing a name you knew briefly 10 years later...

mooncam

[nblender]

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

Re:mooncam

[__aapbzv4610]

actually there is no such thing as an earthrise on the moon, as the moon does not 'rotate' in relation to it's movement around the earth. At any point on the surface of the moon facing the earth, the earth will always be in the same point in the sky, always.

Re:mooncam

[vux984]

actually there is no such thing as an earthrise on the moon, as the moon does not 'rotate' in relation to it's movement around the earth. At any point on the surface of the moon facing the earth, the earth will always be in the same point in the sky, always.

An 'earthrise' is still possible, you just have to put the mooncam on a buggy and drive in the correct direction.

Re:mooncam

[gblackwo]

Yes, this is correct. Perhaps what he may want to see is the sun rising over the earth. Although it had better be a HD webcam, I can't imagine why anyone would want some rubbish 320x320 webcam on the moon. On a related note, NASA's blue marble project has these spectacular views in very nice resolutions.

Re:mooncam

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong.
Libration causes the visible face of the moon to oscillate slightly.
Therefore, you can see an Earthrise from certain points on the moon without being in motion relative to the moon yourself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libration

Re:mooncam

[Kingrames]

"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.

Re:mooncam

[Tweenk]

Your argument seems good at the surface, but it's not true!

The truth is that the Moon librates a bit (a few degrees), so there actually ARE earthrises when you are near the edge of the Earth-observable Moon surface. The Earth just doesn't do a full circle around the sky, it travels along a Lissajous figure.

Even Wikipedia is incorrect on this, at least when you look up "Earthrise".

Re:mooncam

[Tweenk]

Before anyone questions this: The angular span of the Moon's libration is a few times larger than the angular diameter of the Earth as seen from Moon.

Re:mooncam

[guitaristx]

The phenomenon is known as Tidal Locking.

Re:mooncam

[Cyberax]

Earthrise on Moon IS possible. Moon's orbit is not a perfect circle, that's why we have http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Librations

In the best case Earth rises at about 15 degrees.

Re:mooncam

[SignOfZeta]

Even Wikipedia is incorrect on this, at least when you look up "Earthrise".

So fix it. Otherwise, people who don't read Slashdot (if there are any left) will continue to spread lies.

Re:mooncam

[houghi]

And if you are REALLY curious, you can look at it

Re:mooncam

[__aapbzv4610]

wobble != rotation

Re:mooncam

[__aapbzv4610]

as I said to the first guy to make this point, wobble != rotation

Re:mooncam

[Dirtside]

Hm, I'm not sure you're correct. "Earthrise" is this picture.

The famous picture of Earth with Africa visible is this picture. It wasn't taken from the Moon (I recall this from reading about it in the past, although I can't cite it; however it's easily provable, as the position of the camera is much too far below the Moon's ecliptic; you cannot see the entirety of Antarctica from any point on the Moon).

Re:mooncam

[Kingrames]

go figure. I have a huge photoshop on my wall, that has that earth picture where the other would be.

on the other hand it might be that there's more than one picture named "earthrise" since the title of my wallpaper when I got it was called the same thing.

Re:mooncam

[Free the Cowards]

Rotation != the only thing that can cause Earthrise.

Re:mooncam

[Dracophile]

For sufficiently "convenient" values of "slightly", the other poster is right. Good info, though.

Re:mooncam

[Tweenk]

I will when I find the book when I read about that, to avoid the citation needed problem.

E-Z solution (tm)

[MaXiMiUS]

http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Subspace_communication

Ha!

(Kind of pathetic that I had to go through that article and correct about a dozen typos before posting it here..)

Re:E-Z solution (tm)

[__aapbzv4610]

http://www.memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Subspace_communication

everyone agrees that Star Trek's subspace communication is a better definition.

Bold (Crazy) Prediction

[religious freak]

This will be in wider use in 30 years than IPv6

Maybe not, but wouldn't it be crazy if it was?

Re:Bold (Crazy) Prediction

[Daimanta]

The only way to make ipv6 is to force it down the throats of the ISPs. Too bad force and business don't mix. Unless it's the businesses that force something through(like the DMCA)...

Re:Bold (Crazy) Prediction

[jandrese]

Interestingly enough, the only way I'll use IPv6 at home is if my ISP offers it. I have no interest in trying to set up complicated tunnels on my dynamic home link.

Re:Bold (Crazy) Prediction

[JoeRandomHacker]

IPv6 over dynamic IPv4 is pretty easy with AICCU, actually. http://www.sixxs.net/tools/aiccu/

Re:Bold (Crazy) Prediction

[Zeussy]

IPv6 won't have enough IP's for all of space!?! we need IPv8!

Re:Bold (Crazy) Prediction

[MagusX]

Actually, we don't. Fleming's IPv8 only has 43 bits of address space, far less then IPv6's 128 bits.

http://www.cctec.com/maillists/nanog/historical/9711/msg00138.html

From TFA

[scubamage]

"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?

Re:From TFA

[644bd346996]

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.

Re:From TFA

[kabocox]

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?

Um, if you only have one retransmitting router, then you'll loose your critical connection to that end point if that router ever went down...

Re:From TFA

[scubamage]

Given that no other data is given, I really don't have much more to go on. If you do, please share. Yes, the point of custody transfer is that retransmits can be handled by the routers that form the network. But therein lies the problem. When TCP was created the goal was to create a network that could survive a nuclear war. TCP is designed so that if there's no confirmation, the source retransmits. However according to this article the routers handle retransmits. What happens if there is a bit of data that gets transmitted to a router, but the router currently has no other connection point besides the source. It caches that data to be retransmitted as soon as another link is available. However, what if in the meantime that router (the one holding the data in 'custody') gets destroyed or otherwise taken out of commission. What if it gets caught in an ion storm. These are real possibilities. It seems like a very, VERY risky way to do it. Unless of course they're planning to use this as yet another layer which resides somewhere between layers 3 and 4 functions to confirm retransmits from each individual link to the previous link and then ultimately back to the source - which would equate to a LOT of overhead and wasted bandwidth. Unless they're planning to use a connectionless style internetworking protocol, but I doubt that they'd be willing to let data get lost in things this critical.

Re:From TFA

[Mattsson]

You don't simply send your packet and then wipe your cache. You keep the packets at every hop it traverses until you know that it has arrived at its destination, so that you can resend it in case of a transmission error or fatal equipment failure.
Especially since you, with these distances, can have a large chunk of data in transit between two satellites due to the slow pace of light and radio waves.
That, along with the limited transmission speeds, is also one of the reasons why you do not want to resend lost packets all the way from the originator, which is still possible in the worst case scenario where the data is lost in all the routing satellites.
Unless the probe, or Mars lander or whatever also loose the data before it gets through.

Actually, such a system is more secure, from a data loss point of view, since the data can get through even if it is lost at both the originator and at some point in transfer, since it can be resent by any router that it has passed through.

It makes sensitive data vulnerable to interception though... In case some aliens where to abduct a satellite that's caching data before it can be purged. =)
 

Re:From TFA

[profplump]

You're right that it's not possible to lose data in the middle of the network with pure TCP. But if the original source gets hit by a meteor in the middle of (re)transmitting, you'd still lose the connection.

Plus the worst-case scenario you describe here is this:
1. I request data from a remote resource
2. The remote resource transmits my data to some intermediate node
3. Data is cached at some intermediate node, and the source is notified of the competed transfer
4. The intermediate node is destroyed
5. I notice that my data never arrived and request it again

That worst-case is essentially indifferent from the worst-case for pure TCP, it's just that the timeout in step 5 has to be much longer. Transmission logs on the source server cannot be considered a reliable indicator of delivery, but that's pretty minor in the grand scheme of things, and really easy to work around.

Re:From TFA

[profplump]

Or you could just use out-of-band confirmations for critical data, and retransmit at an appropriate interval when you don't see the confirmation. And even that only applies to unsolicited transmissions -- for interactive traffic the remote host already expects a reply, and can simply retransmit the request if it doesn't get one.

For example, it would be trivial to use this model for loose interactivity without wasting more than a few bytes of bandwidth:
1. Earth host transmits new instructions with sequence number 1
2. Remote host never gets the instructions for whatever reason
3. Earth hosts transmits new instructions with sequence number 2
4. Remote host gets them, notices that the sequence number is 2, and asks for a retransmit of sequence 1 before applying sequence 2

Re:From TFA

[Mattsson]

The question is:
In interplanetary transmissions, do you save more bandwidth by having less overhead, or by not having to retransmit every lost bit all the way from, say, a probe on Titan to Mission control?
I don't know, since I haven't studied the problem, nor worked with interplanetary transmissions.
I'd wager that there's quite a lot of bandwidth overhead lost to error control and correction in such transmissions today in order to have as few retransmissions as possible, though.

Re:From TFA

[Mattsson]

Transmission logs on the source server cannot be considered a reliable indicator of delivery

It can if there's two types of entries.

Node reception confirmed.
Destination reception confirmed.

If only the first one is logged, reception counts as failed.
If both is logged, reception is verified.

Just requires a notification of reception to be sent back from the receiver to the sender, apart from the notification sent to every node in the path.
A little more overhead, but might be worth it. =)

Re:From TFA

[gr8dude]

And so the notion of "aitm" (alien in the middle) attack came into life.

Remember, you saw it here first!

Re:From TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

What about a man-in-the-moon-in-the-middle attack?

Re:From TFA

[naasking]

Do you really think, based on just TFA, that Vint Cerf of all people would design such a flawed protocol?

Yes, if he can design it under the assumption that all nodes are trusted. As long as there's an appropriate node authorization presented at connection time, then the node can safely queue such data on the authorized party's behalf.

Excellent

[silentcoder]

Now we'll be able to send e-mail to Dr Edgar Mitchell's aliens and ask them if they exist !

Great!

[mlwmohawk]

Soon Davidson will be able to spam martians.

In related news ...

[PPH]

... Comcast moves to block P2P (planet to planet) traffic.

Re:In related news ...

[Constantine XVI]

So what, their Death Star gets in the way too often?

Re:In related news ...

[hob42]

No, that would be AT&T.

Alien Ascii Pr0n

[pseudorand]

Ya, but I bet it'll be used mostly for pr0n. And I bet the bandwidth will suck too, so we'll just end up with a bunch of ASCII art pictures of naked aliens.

Re:Alien Ascii Pr0n

[Wiarumas]

Those chicks from Mars Colony Alpha Beta Four are into some kinky stuff.

Re:Alien Ascii Pr0n

[AI0867]

You underestimate the awesomeness of ASCII pr0n, especially in combination with aalib and all its tools.

Interplanetary ICMP

[kwabbles]

~$ traceroute voyager2.heliopause.net
traceroute to voyager2.heliopause.net (207.46.193.254), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
  1 192.168.0.15 (192.168.0.15) 0.180 ms 0.186 ms 0.205 ms
  2 netblock.dslcarrier.com (66.159.218.1) 14.379 ms 17.076 ms 20.048 ms
  3 satrptr.spacenet.net (66.51.203.33) 36.531 ms 45.014 ms 42.245 ms
  4 mars.spacenet.net (206.223.143.41) 92.229 ms 101.596 ms 99.575 ms
  5 jupiter.spacenet.net (216.239.43.12) 220.073 ms 266.554 ms 254.288 ms
  6 saturn.spacenet.net (209.85.253.178) 880.760 ms 854.294 ms 878.981 ms
  7 uranus.goatse.net (209.85.251.94) 1233.954 ms 1332.028 ms 1315.059 ms
  8 neptune.spacenet.net (74.125.19.104) 1703.205 ms 1721.652 ms 1733.635 ms
  9 pluto.spacenet.net (73.113.43.11) 2301.311 ms 2435.201 ms 2448.221 ms
10 * * *
11 asteriodb3221.microsoft.com (207.46.191.230) 3411.411 ms 3813.153 ms 3761.314 ms
12 voyager2.heliopause.net (207.46.193.254) 7810.134 ms 7956.324 ms 8103.132 ms

~$

Re:Interplanetary ICMP

[exscape]

It'll probably take a while before we have superliminal communication, though. ;)

Re:Interplanetary ICMP

[kwabbles]

It'll probably take a while before we have superliminal communication, though. ;)

Bah - shamans have been doing that crap for YEARS.

Re:Interplanetary ICMP

[scorp1us]

Wouldn't we know by now if we're going to ever get superluminal communication? You know, because the signal would travel back in time?

Re:Interplanetary ICMP

[kwabbles]

BTW - the second after I hit submit on that post, I thought to myself "this is slashdot... some smartass is going to calculate those latency times vs the actual distance of the planets and then make fun of me".

Heheee I love it. :)

Re:Interplanetary ICMP

[oneiros27]

I just thought the numbers looked a little low ... (only seconds to Voyager2?)

it'd actually be a bit of a pain, as you'd need the distances between each hop, and I don't have SPICE installed on this machine.

Re:Interplanetary ICMP

[kwabbles]

Wouldn't we know by now if we're going to ever get superluminal communication? You know, because the signal would travel back in time?

I dunno, but Doc said that if a packet travels through time and sees itself in the past, it'll either a) cause a catastrophic disaster within the space-time continuum, or b) pass out.

(Unless it sees itself saving the DeLorean from the Libyans, in which case nothing will happen.)

Re:Interplanetary ICMP

[Anonymous Coward]

Man I wish I could afford a faster than light connection like you... Here I am stuck on a legacy electromagnetic link:

~$ ping voyager2.heliopause.net
PING voyager2.heliopause.net (207.46.193.254) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from (207.46.193.254): icmp_seq=1 ttl=54 time=72877083.5 ms
64 bytes from (207.46.193.254): icmp_seq=2 ttl=54 time=72877853 ms
64 bytes from (207.46.193.254): icmp_seq=3 ttl=54 time=72979083.2 ms
64 bytes from (207.46.193.254): icmp_seq=4 ttl=54 time=72877483.6 ms
64 bytes from (207.46.193.254): icmp_seq=5 ttl=54 time=72897053.8 ms

--- voyager2.heliopause.net ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 364508557ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 72877083/72901711/72897054/72901711 ms

It took me over 4 days just to run that!

Re:Interplanetary ICMP

[kwabbles]

Man I wish I could afford a faster than light connection like you... Here I am stuck on a legacy electromagnetic link.

It took me over 4 days just to run that!

Get AOL already then.

Re:Interplanetary ICMP

[scorp1us]

When he said that, he meant mutual seeing itself. because Marty was busy with the Lybians, he never noticed himself on the ridge. Ergo, no problem.

The paradox is created when you alter your past, not just observe it, since it won't result in a change to the time line.

Re:A new area awaiting patentification

[clarkkent09]

Citizens of Earth,

It has come to our attention that an earthling called Vint Cerf is making unauthorized use of our work in violation of GPTO (Galactic Patents and Trademarks Office) patent number 0932984720392837409 for Interplanetary Internet Protocol.

We demand that he must immediately cease the use and distribution of our work and that he forwards all copies and relevant documentation to us by the earliest space courier. Failure to do so will result in a lawsuit to the amount of our estimated damages of 1,008,076,123.09 galactic credits (equal to 0.0008 USD).

Very truly yours,

Aliens

P.S Greetings, Dr Mitchell

Re:Hacking a satellite to get free TV is as bad as

[ReverendLoki]

Hacking a satellite to get free TV is as bad as hacking electrical plants?

No, but I suppose hacking an old Cold War era Soviet "Weather Satellite" might be.

C'mon, you know they exist. Several hundred Hollywood movies can't all be wrong.

A new meaning to high speed protocol...

[pdq332]

I wonder if communications sources and sinks are traveling relative to one another at relativistic speeds, would the protocol have to include information about velocity relative to a chosen standard inertial frame? Otherwise you could possibly get weird effects, like sending a Kerberos ticket from a moving spaceship and it would be observed to expire at different times in different frames. Or maybe the communications infrastructure could include a measurement of the redshift of interplanetary communications signals and use that to infer relative velocities and include that with locally generated timestamps - you could call it the Hubble router.

Re:A new meaning to high speed protocol...

[644bd346996]

Consider the effects of relativity on GPS satellites. The time skew for a GPS satellite in low earth orbit is about 38 microseconds per 24 hour day. Thus, it isn't hard to imagine that links in an interplanetary network could operate for days without their respective clocks differing by more than a few frame lengths.

In a high-bandwidth link, the routers would probably have to adjust the transmit rates, but timestamps would be a fairly minor issue (and trivially fixed with ntp).

Re:A new meaning to high speed protocol...

[oneiros27]

TCP wouldn't, as it's Transport (Layer 4). What you talk about would be either Data Link or Physical. (I'm going to assume Physical, as it's dealing with aspects of modulation).

As for needing to compensate for it ... yes. And it's still a problem. (And testing sucks, too.)

Re:A new area awaiting patentification

[RabidMoose]

1,008,076,123.09 galactic credits (equal to 0.0008 USD)

Wow, those Aliens have a pretty crappy economy.

MITRE should be all caps

[techmuse]

MITRE (all caps) is the name of the company, not Mitre (in case someone wants to update the original post.)

Re:A new area awaiting patentification

[jandrese]

They must have had a 1000 years of space-Bush presidency.

in space...

[notgm]

in space, no one can hear you ping.

Also appropriate for station wagon full of tapes?

[Locke2005]

"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway." -- Andrew S. Tanenbaem, Computer Networks, 4th Ed. p. 91

Hmmmmmm

[tgd]

Per byte its probably still a lot cheaper than using SMS.

Re:Hmmmmmm

[Mattsson]

Hmm...

Why not simply put a few 3G towers around the solar system?
Then all probes can send data via SMS, pictures via MMS and even do video calls to send realtime videos!
And the phone companies can get their part of the NASA/ESA/Whatever-budgets they so rightfully deserve. =)

Re:Cerf is cool

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Yeah, Cerf is amazing. His name itself is pretty cool. However, he is a bit too optimistic about human nature. He needs to be paired up with Bruce Schneier to make sure we don't have pranksters launching Denial of Sustenance attacks against us.

Interstellar networking

[ckthorp]

Interstellar networking: putting the Ether in Ethernet.

Re:A new area awaiting patentification

[znerk]

1,008,076,123.09 galactic credits (equal to 0.0008 USD)

Wow, those Aliens have a pretty crappy economy.

Nope, it's the shipping charges that'll get ya.

Re:A new area awaiting patentification

[mapsjanhere]

well, looks like 1 galactic credit = 1 Zimbabwe dollar

Re:Welcome Alien Overlords!

[The Master Control P]

The distance between planets in our solar system are almost unmeasurably miniscule compared to the distances between stars. Earth is already brighter than the Sun in the radio bands due to our chatter (not sure if that's still true due to increasing use of fiber & wired communication).

If the sun were shrunk to be a meter in diameter, Earth would be a dot 200 meters away, Pluto would be a decent 5 mile bike ride away, and the nearest stars would be on the other side of Earth. And the fastest probe we've ever launched, New Horizons, plods along at a bit over 500 meters per year.

Virus Uploads still allowed?

[A440Hz]

Will this extension of IP still allow virus uploads to alien ships via MacBooks?

Re:Virus Uploads still allowed?

[naasking]

Sorry, alien virus upload capability was discontinued when they killed of the Apple Powerbooks and Mac OS 8.x and 9.x OS. Apple MacBooks don't come with this feature, but they do come with the ability to be easily recognized as Unix and used by 13 year olds.

Lag

[Codex_of_Wisdom]

Thing of the lag times. It's 20 minutes between here and Mars- the nearest planet! Instant messaging would be a long process (and not so "instant"). And forget your MMOs! Where's FTLC when you need it? (for those who don't know, that's Faster Than Light Communication)

Re:Hacking a satellite to get free TV is as bad as

[Mattsson]

That would require bringing it home, retrofit it to be able to use IP and then putting it back up there. =)

Unless, of course, if they can do a "simple" firmware upgrade via standard satellite communications to make it talk IP.

But I agree that they probably should keep this interplanetary internet separate from The Internet, or at least have one hell of a firewall in between.
Imagine a manned lunar-lander being hacked, with some idiot hacker, who has no idea of what the system he has hacked actually does or controls, managing to activate separation or whatnot with his stupidity. =P

Re:A new area awaiting patentification

[Linker3000]

Dear Aliens,

Have you met our representative - Mr Darl McBride?

Now about that technology you stole from us...

Oooh, the possibilities

[Karem Lore]

Just think, the next astronaut could order their Dominos Pizza from the moon, browse porn, download music (doubt is BMA and RIAA will come get you on the moon)...

Re:Cerf is cool

[GrievousMistake]

It is thought that they may have been in contact with each other. Sadly, we don't know what they said, because we don't have the technology to read the protocol, and even if we had, we still couldn't break the encryption.

Hey, whats that thing?

[LameAssTheMity]

I can see it now...

Astronaut1: Hey, whats that thing over there?

Astronaut2: I dunno, google it.

Obligatory Trek reference

[laughing rabbit]

To go where no spam has gone before!

--

Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor, not a CCNA!

--

I can't be here all week, so ya'll have fun.

Why read TFA?

[steveo777]

When we have a perfectly good system already? We're going to need some really big flags, a couple of long poles. And a good telescopes.

Re:Hacking a satellite to get free TV is as bad as

[MadnessASAP]

Well then you best hope he doesn't decide to play a game. Specifically not one called "Global Thermonuclear War"

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Linker3000]

Hello Gnarg,

Your opposite gender progeny creator says its not so emboldened!!!

e.x.t_e-n+d your r=e=p=r=o=d=u=c=t=i=v=e f~l~u~i~d -t-r-a-n-s-f-e-r p-r-o-t-u-b-e-r-a-n-c-e.

S01-3 V1ag-rrra, C1aLLiSS/

Make OGPC happy - replace universalwideweb with uww below

universalwideweb.solpharm89.sol ...

Pretty cool, he was talking about this a while ago

[Jay Tarbox]

At our annual state telecommunications users conference 4 years ago, he was the keynote speaker. Great speech and he talked about the future of IP and his desire to have interplanetary communications over IP and of course the latency issues.

Not exactly a webcam and not exactly live, but...

[xsadar]

http://space.jaxa.jp/movie/20071113_kaguya_movie01_e.html

Waitaminute... LUNAR?

[Tastecicles]

Latency is gonna be a bitch!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

ARIN's Dilemma

[icedivr]

How many IP addresses should they allocate to the rest of the universe??

This is just great ...

[HW_Hack]

Now I can get SPAM from fucking Jupiter ... bloody wonderful.

Yeah, but you get cool ping times and traceroutes.

[cheros]

I would love to know what ping and traceroute for something like marslander01.nasa.gov would look like although you'd probably have to dramatically adjust timeouts (and don't wait for an ACK before you send the next packet - could be fun for the team to build a simulation..

Just before we were given the whole "www" idea and Spyglass and Mosaic appeared I remember we used to ping a site rumored to be on one of the poles (North, I think) called mcmurdo, and then show a traceroute to it. It was a nice way to demonstrate to people new to the Net to show routing and how everything was in reach. Of course, that was in the days that Usenet was still usable, and you could open a talk session to someone on the other side of the planet and be reasonably sure (s)he'd answer if they were awake. At least there's IM for that :-)

It's quite a challenge to communicate over that distance as timeouts make acknowledgement based transmissions useless. I think keep-alives may play a huge role here, and asymmetric transmission will be standard.

Having said that, some civil servants I have to deal with would just about fit in with the time lags of this traffic :-(.

Re:Cerf is cool

[Fred_A]

I had the privilege of attending one of his lectures back in 1998 and I can almost remember his entire speech.

Was he wearing his infamous "IP everywhere" shirt ?

Re:A new area awaiting patentification

[kamochan]

TCP/IIP?

Extending the Internet of Everything

[PensivePeter]

OK, so say we extend the "Internet of Everything" to outer space objects - but who is going to RFID-tag them all?

Read your copy

[whitroth]

To deal with "meteors and weighty antennae"? Duh.... The #1 problem is *time*. You are going to have a *real* slow up/download when you're on Mars, and it's on the other side of the sun: hours.

              mark "didn't even begin to talk about t a l k i n g t o T i T a n"

Router management

[MECC]

In the future, Scott envisions routers afloat in deep space

Network management may be the biggest challenge. IP is already designed to deal with link failure and congestion. But, when the router out by Ganymede is down and won't come up you can't just dispatch a network engineer to zip out there with a laptop and console cable. (much as I'd like some aspects of that job ;-)

We had a suitable protocol thirty years ago

[John Hasler]

UUCP (with Mapalias)

Re:We had a suitable protocol thirty years ago

[John Hasler]

Pathalias.

In Soviet Russia....

[pdxp]

... space ping YOU!