Interplanetary Internet Tested In Space

Anonymous Coward writes "After Vint Cerf planned the Interplanetary Internet, there's a press release saying that the Interplanetary Internet is now being tested in space, using the Bundle Protocol developed by the Delay-Tolerant Networking Research Group. There's a conference paper with details on the testing too. These guys were previously the first to test IPv6 in space. Now they've found something with even fewer users than IPv6 to play with!"

Comments

Hams had it in 1985

[Bruce Perens]

Radio amateurs ran a wide area IP network over 1200 baud AX.25 half-duplex links in 1985, and wide area networks without IP before then. You could literally hear your packet being relayed from point to point. The IP software of the time (KA9Q NOS, and later on Linux) could handle the delays just fine. It wasn't the 30-minute delays of planetary communications, but certainly much slower than conventional IP networks, seconds per packet and tens of seconds for packets to be forwarded and acknowledged. Linux has had the features necessary to do this way back in the Waltje (Fred Van Kempen) networking software, before Alan Cox started working on it. Waltje was a Dutch CB packet enthusiast. Sometimes people turn that stuff on and don't realize they aren't the first ones.

Bruce