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The Tech Aboard the International Space Station
CNETNate writes "With its own file server for uploaded Hollywood blockbusters, a 10Mbps Internet connection to Earth, and around a hundred IBM ThinkPad notebooks, the consumer technology aboard the $150 billion International Space Station is impressive. It's the responsibility of just two guys to maintain the uptime of the Space Station's IT, and they have given CNET an in-depth interview to explain what tech's aboard, how it works, and whether Windows viruses are a threat to the astronauts. In a related feature, the Space Station's internal network (which operates over bandwidth of just 1Mbps) and its connected array of Lenovo notebooks is explained, along with the tech we could see in the future."
In the very long run, after we colonize Mars and possibly the Moon, latency issues will become even more severe. It will be interesting to see whether we will simply give them separate networks or have those networks as part of the internet. If the second occurs, we may need new protocols to deal with the large latency and related issues.
"One of the T61ps is a server, making it a client/server network with a couple of routers and an Ethernet backbone.."
You're telling me that with over a hundred machines up there that they have a single point of failure for their domain architecture? And it's a laptop? Hey NASA, ever hear of high-availability?
Granted they probably don't use that many domain resources, but you'd think if they were going to use any specific kind of tech that they would make sure it was redundant. You'd think with how much they spent for this space-station that they'd make an appropriate IT purchase..
The max ground distance for unamplified WiFi is about 200km. The ISS orbits between 340 and 350km, therefore I say we all point our collective WiFi antennae up and try and see the first person to connect up to their network. Of course, you'd only have about 90 minutes of access as I recall; the ISS orbits too fast for much more access time.
Nah, wouldn't be so bad.
ISS orbits at between 278 km (173 mi) and 460 km (286 mi) from Earth.
LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellites orbit at about 400 km, and Geostationary sats orbit at 35,786 km over the equator.
I'm connected to a GEO sat right now (I'm in the Gulf of Aden atm), and ping time is just under 800ms. Not great, admittedly, but really not bad.
I imagine NASA keeps their pipe pretty full 24/7 and that might generate some lag, but at their altitude, they are probably getting 300ms ping times or better. It also depends on where your data goes once it hits the Earth station. We had a horrible bottleneck at Eik, Norway so we routed the data through Mirimar, Florida and it lopped off about 600ms from our ping time.
I'm guessing NASA has a pretty sweet peering arrangement ;)
"Study your math, kids. Key to the universe." -The Archangel Gabriel
There is no legal way to get the movie off the DVD - they have to be breaking CSS to do it, which as we all know, is against the law. And the Fed Govt would never break their own law. Or does Hollywood provide NASA with special digital editions of the films just for NASA?
What happens to these laptops when they are decommissioned? They mentioned these thinkpads are from 2002 (which makes them the same vintage as the ones I use for myself at home); will they be sold off when they are replaced? I would love for my next laptop to be one that spent several years in orbit!
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Our scientific equipment "Declic" was sent to the ISS last august. It runs Linux and uC-OS II on a whole pile of microprocessors. The Linux of the part of the system that we built was completely custom built based on "linux from scratch". For an interesting read: Linux Journal
The 2.6 kernel was state of the art when we built it, but we needed its lower latency features.
In the very long run, after we colonize Mars and possibly the Moon, latency issues will become even more severe. It will be interesting to see whether we will simply give them separate networks or have those networks as part of the internet. If the second occurs, we may need new protocols to deal with the large latency and related issues.
Er, Wow. You're worried about network latency and we haven't even put the first human-inhabitable structure on our moon yet. Cripes man, perhaps you should step back just a few parsecs and realize we might just need stuff like an oxygen-rich environment first, for when you want to hyperventilate whilst flogging your Captains Log to Martian Porn some 250,000 miles away...
First, "works with space flight hardware" != "works with the ISS's COTS based network". Second, what is 'obvious to everyone' is frequently wrong.
First off, don't be coming here and making false claims of authority - and then getting it wrong. Second off, RTFA.
These are existing consumer grade products. Sure, they're individually screened and tested and have some modifications to their fans and ventilation - but beyond that, they're absolutely identical to what you or I can get off the shelf. (Add one of those aftermarket lap desks with extra ventilation and you have something almost exactly like what flies.) So says not only TFA, but the guys in the Shuttle and ISS program I occasionally correspond with.
I know someone else has pointed to this, but I think it bears repeating:
article quote: "If the crew wants specific movies, music or TV shows, we can uplink them to the server and they can then access them from any computer."
If these movies are coming from a DVD format, then DMCA violations are certainly occuring at NASA.