Vint Cerf Plugs Android Into Interplanetary Net

Several readers sent in an update on DTN, the interplanetary Internet protocol that Vint Cerf has been working on for many years (and we have been discussing for nearly as long). The news now is that Cerf has added a DTN stack to the open source Android code, seeing uses in mobile applications for a protocol that does not assume a continuous connection.

Comments

Unlimited?

[Geoffrey.landis]

Is "interplanetary" part of the unlimited calling package?

great, more spam mail

[nomadic]

DEAR SIR/MADAM:

I am X'Fdfd'hdfsa St'uun. Auditor of the First Bank of Venus. I am contacting you on this business of transferreing US $35 MILLION DOLLARS into a safe Earth account and the need is very urgent.

I got your contact from the Venusian Chambers of Commerce and interplanetary family directory and it is with business trust that made me to contact you on this matter.

I write to solicit for the transfer of this money into your account. This Money was generated from an unused Account in my Bank (FBV).I am contacting you for your help and partnership for the following reason:

My present financial resources will not be sufficient for me to handle the transfer alone successfully without financial assistance from a reliable foreign partner on another planet. 40% of this sum would be for you as compensation for using your Bank account in transferring this money, 10% would be used to reimburse the expenses made by both parties during the processing of the transferring which include,DTN bills, travelling expenses and fees, and starship fuel. While 50% is for me. Please note that I will arrange to meet with you immediately after the successful conclusion of the transfer, the 50% share of mine will be used for investment on Earth. Your assistance and co-operation is highly needed. I assure you that this transaction is 100% risk free. If you are interested I will require your banking information as mentioned below: 1. Name to be used as beneficiary and beneficiary's address. 2. Your private and confidential telephone/ fax number(s) 3. Your banking details and address, your bank Telephone and fax number(s).

Re:great, more spam mail

[gpronger]

More likely, Can I order over the interplanet-net; a family box of your hot dead birds and a side of cholesterol laden deep fried tubers? Deliver to ZZ9-plural-Z-alpha, 5th out from the sun, 6th moon. Knock twice. And do you still accept American Express?

Re:great, more spam mail

[mjwx]

I finally can go on a Vegan diet, now I just need to wait for the deliveries from Vega

Does not assume a continuous connection

[Anonymous Coward]

This will be perfect for AT&T's network. And with slightly less latency than Voyager.

Re:Does not assume a continuous connection

[mcgrew]

And with slightly less latency than Voyager

Star Trek Voyager or NASA Voyager?

Vint Cerf Got the Ill Communication

[AP31R0N]

When will this go intergalactic?

Re:Vint Cerf Got the Ill Communication

[RivieraKid]

If you have a constant speed (i.e. the speed of light), then units that normally describe duration can reasonably be used to indicate distance, especially over great distances.

Think of the light year mentioned above. A light year is the distance that light can travel in a year - so we're using a unit of time to describe distance. It works because the speed of light is the same regardless of your frame of reference, which also means the distance is the same regardless of your frame of reference.

Re:Vint Cerf Got the Ill Communication

[RivieraKid]

Well, yes and no.

The effective speed of light changes in different medium, but only because of the refractive index. The light is still travelling at the same constant speed but because of the refractive index, it's not travelling in a straight line so it only appears to travel slower.

What you refer to is the speed of propogation of light through various transparent medium. The light is delayed due to absorbtion and re-emission, but is not slowed down.

Even experiments to slow and completely stop a beam of light (say, in a Bose-Einstein Condensate) are really just affecting it's effective speed, effectively capturing it with "tiny mirrors" but the absolute speed of the light is unaffected.

Re:Vint Cerf Got the Ill Communication

[Nadaka]

Since when does ping measure distance?

http://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html

Synergy

[AlecC]

See? Space research does have spinoffs for everyday life. If we weren't trying to get to Mars, we wouldn't have this useful protocol for Earthside use.

Double NASA's budget at once.

E.T phone home!

[frambris]

Yeah. Now we can ditch the Speak'n'Spell when we want to phone home.

Re:E.T phone home!

[Ukab the Great]

There's an app for that.

Packet radio?

[Gordonjcp]

If it works well with a potentially poor channel, maybe it would be suitable for improving packet radio systems. Remember that article a week or two back about what would happen if "the Government" shut off the Internet? Go get those amateur radio licences, folks...

Great. Just what I needed.

[rickb928]

Some of my family thinks I'm on another planet. Now they can call me.

I need this like I need Graffiti on my G1. Wait, that would be cool...

Re:earth to Vint Cerf

[Anonymous Coward]

You miss the point. They're not adding DTN to the mobile for extraterrestrial communication - they're adding it to the mobile for better terrestrial communication.

The situations this protocol is designed to deal with - intermittent connection with variable (and potentially high) latency - are things that apply very much to mobile devices.

1980 wants its protocol back

[thethibs]

Sounds like uucp over zmodem.

DTN != Protocol

[pdxp]

Several readers sent in an update on DTN, the interplanetary Internet protocol ...

Please stop screwing up the meaning of DTN. Not just /., but everyone writing article about Vint Cerf and "his" interplanetary internet. The acronym stands for Delay Tolerant Network, and is a type of network in which connectivity is ephemeral and a contemporaneous path between two points often doesn't exist at any point in time, necessitating any communication to be tolerant to delay (and/or disruption).

A DTN protocol is one that takes advantage of the ephemeral connectivity of DTNs, usually along the lines of employing the store, carry, and forward approach to getting data from A to B via a time-varying path; e.g. a path exists, just not at any point in time.

What Cerf has done has create a bundle forwarding protocol stack for the Android. It's not as "out there" as you'd think- someone send you data, you carry it, then forward it later. Lots of questions/issues in between as you might imagine.

I think some people like Kevin Fall need to get more credit for their contribution to this area of research.

Disclaimer: I am NOT Kevin Fall but I am a network researcher, specifically in the area of DTNs. No, not the algorithm.

DTN == Twitter in space

[mounthood]

Vint Cerf on DTN:

streaming is a little nuts but file transfers will work - delays will be long however.

sensor nets are a natural. as is email

short messaging ditto

status reports from systems; some forms of control also ok.

image transfer, no problem.

v

http://mailman.ccsds.org/pipermail/sis-dtn/2008-July/000038.html