From: Regular Expression (xeger@xeger.net)
Date: Sun Jul 14 2002 - 12:31:18 MDT
>
>
>BTW, has anyone here looked into the internet protocols for the ISS and
>other space missions? Maybe we could just extrapolate here...
>
>
As far as their Internet access goes, ISS is fairly boring. They use
normal TCP/IP on a private network segment. The ground station serves as
their router and the whole setup is heavily firewalled. Station
personnel have email addresses, but the mail exchangers are all
Earthside; NASA staff filter incoming messages and forward only the
relevant stuff into the queue of messages that actually get transmitted
up to the station.
The latest incarnation of the Internet Protocol, IPv6, has some features
intended specifically to support for high-bandwidth high-latency
networks. With the time delay between Earth and Mars being anywhere
between 15 and 55 minutes, an interplanetary network would certainly fit
the latter criterion! We can only hope that we have enough spare wattage
on both ends to make an interplanetary radio link very high bandwidth,
to compensate for its being so damned slow.
If you were to put me in charge of developing an interplanetary version
of the Internet, I would argue that you need to make changes in the
network structure above the network layer. For instance: if CNN wants a
web presence on both Earth and Mars, then they need to set up a server
farm on Mars. The databases of the two sites can synchronize
continuously themselves, so that stories, messages, users, adverts and
other content propagate between the two sites limited only by the
interplanetary latency. Similar tricks will work with any sort of
network application that doesn't depend on realtime communication
between two parties.
For things like ICQ, Instant Messenger or CUSeeMe, there's no quick and
elegant fix. Methinks people with a one-hour delay in their instant
message traffic would quickly learn the awesome expressive power of email.
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