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The Internet

Vint Cerf's Disruption-Tolerant Networking 73

An anonymous reader writes "Net pioneer, Vint Cerf, talked this week about the space internet (the Interplanetary Internet), and an interesting 1994 April Fool's email he penned as a Request for Comment [1607]. The thread involves a reverse time capsule from the year 2023, but covers Cerf's side interests in Shakespeare. Since 2004 marks the 30th anniversary of publication of the first paper on the Internet, his views on the future of the net and Interplanetary Internet seem to have morphed somewhat into delay and disruption tolerant networking because of high demand for videoconferencing, Voice-Over IP, and multimedia."
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Vint Cerf's Disruption-Tolerant Networking

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  • Um...The site says Delay, not Disruption....wtf?
  • by pestie ( 141370 ) on Sunday February 29, 2004 @01:18AM (#8421161)
    Now if only someone can find a way to keep the internet from disrupting my productivity at work...
  • by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Sunday February 29, 2004 @01:18AM (#8421166)
    This brings up an interesting step in the path towards trying to settle Mars... would it be a smart idea to have communciations satellites orbiting Mars before we send the first humans?

    Having the already-in-space assets so that reliable Earth-to-Mars links can be established could be very useful to the first manned missions, especially so we could avoid losing contact in the situations where they'd otherwise have to transmit through the planet to get back to earth.

    Imagine having all of Mars already be a wireless Internet hotspot before we get there...
    • by Anonymous Coward
      I think we should send up robots that can create really "cheap" (as in not fancy, low quality) solar cells out of the materials already available on Mars.
    • by mattjb0010 ( 724744 ) on Sunday February 29, 2004 @01:36AM (#8421234) Homepage
      This brings up an interesting step in the path towards trying to settle Mars... would it be a smart idea to have communciations satellites orbiting Mars before we send the first humans?

      The current set of satellites provide communication links [nasa.gov] between the landers and Earth.
      • by QuantumFTL ( 197300 ) * on Sunday February 29, 2004 @02:50AM (#8421411)
        This brings up an interesting step in the path towards trying to settle Mars... would it be a smart idea to have communciations satellites orbiting Mars before we send the first humans?

        The current set of satellites provide communication links between the landers and Earth.

        Yes, however it's clear that the limited bandwidth provided by those satalites is not nearly as much as one would wish for an entire human settlement to have to share.

        Also it would be smart to have 100% dedicated communications satallites so that there would be less chance of something unrelated to communications causing a problem on the satallite.

        Don't get me wrong, the satallites have been great (I work on MER) however we still have to throw away observations due to bandwidth constraint, and we have to wait quite a bit to get data back, on the order of several hours... not an ideal situation!

        Maybe a few optical links with a radio backup would do the trick.

        Cheers,
        Justin
        • by Helvick ( 657730 ) on Sunday February 29, 2004 @05:48AM (#8421781) Homepage Journal
          Certainly an interesting idea

          That's probably why NASA already have the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter [nasa.gov] scheduled for launch in 2009. This is still being spec'ed out but optical links, which are currently described as testing\Proof of concept and primary Ka-Band capabilities (once proven in MRO below) are both in plan right now.

          Next year's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter [nasa.gov] has significantly better telecoms relaying capability than the existing Odyssey\MGS orbiters - 6Mbits/sec using Ka-band. This goes with some major upgrades to the DSN as this currently has 10Mbit/sec limitations for telecoms at Mars distances AFAIK. This JPL presentation [usc.edu] has lots of detail on the near term\medium term plans and proposals and where the IPN fits in. This indicates that the bandwidth of optical links to mars would be in the 30-300Mbps range.

    • by ColaMan ( 37550 ) on Sunday February 29, 2004 @01:47AM (#8421260) Journal
      Nah, ya just kick a comms satellite out the door as your landing vehicle goes past aerosynchronous orbit.
    • Mars WiFi (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Imagine having all of Mars already be a wireless Internet hotspot before we get there...

      and a Starbucks in every crater.
  • by Bobdoer ( 727516 ) on Sunday February 29, 2004 @01:19AM (#8421169) Homepage Journal
    ...is all nice and fine, but disruption/delay tolerant people, those are a rarity.
  • by MacFury ( 659201 ) <me@nOsPAM.johnkramlich.com> on Sunday February 29, 2004 @01:20AM (#8421173) Homepage
    A disruption tolerant internet would be great...but at what point do we allow critical applications to communicate over such a system? In reference to a recent article on VoIP 911 service...I wouldn't trust that critcal line of communication if it failed as often as my DSL connection.

    Who is Half Handsome? [halfhandsome.com]

    • by Anonymous Coward
      I wouldn't trust that critcal line of communication if it failed as often as my DSL connection.

      Maybe you should think about finding a new ISP?? I was an early adopter of DSL, since 2000, and in those 4 years the longest my connection was ever down was 6 hours. In total, my router has disconnected from my ISP 9 times in 4 years.
    • by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Sunday February 29, 2004 @01:27AM (#8421201)
      It's a case of matching the network technology to the application. It's the reason why we have both TCP (for when it needs to get there uncorrupted) and UDP (for when any packet that's late is now of no use) available for use under IP.

      There's a big difference between a 911 call on Earth, and getting data back from Mars. Those two networks should likely have very little in common.
    • failure on your DSL either means a) nosync caused by static on your lines meaning either your wiring is bad or the telco sucks, in either case the line can be adjusted and the noise level brought down. Unless of course your provider is using ghetto DSLAMS, b) your modem or eth cards are garbage or c) you're using shoddy wiring (rj45's phone cords, etc.) or shoddy splitters, or have some crazy ass fax/phone/^* set up that's give you linenoise. Heck housealarms can do that, so can vibrations on the line if you live near like a train or something.

      Just because it could be one of the choices though does not mean VoIP is a bad idea, as far as the entire VoIP 9/11 argument, I see it as being useless considering even 11 year olds have cell phones. Don't tell me you're like one of those people in a horror movie, where they fall and stay on the ground screaming. Pick up another line of communication. Think of it in terms of everyday normality, you catch a flat, there's a spare, etc.

      As for disruption tolerant, it would be literally impossible. That's asking for a vendor to create the ultmite failsafe product. Anything can happen, sadly look at 9/11 for example. To ask for something perfect would be to ask for the impossible, to not have a failover implementation of sorts is mere stupidity, and should not be blamed on technology whatsoever. Hell if I were trapped in the desert with no phone, etc., bet your ass I'm trying to make some smoke signals.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • hehehe (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 29, 2004 @01:47AM (#8421261)
    January, 14, 2024:

    linux 15.28

    subroot@uberbox.com# ping -f www.mars.mr

    http://www.slashdot.org:
    January, 17, 2004 18:06 GMT

    Mars Gets first DDOS

    An anonymous reader writes, "It appears a group of hackers have successfully performed the first denial of service attack against Mars, taking the interplanetary internet down for several hours today. The hackers managed to mask their IPv8 addresses by rerouting through several interplanetary sublinks that initially showed them originating approxmatley 600,000 miles away from earth in the middle of space." Update 20:24GMT Yeah its a dupe again! We ran a story on this for three days in a row. It was originally posted here, here and here.

  • by Magus311X ( 5823 ) on Sunday February 29, 2004 @02:08AM (#8421311)
    Some interesting articles about DTN that were made available on the IPNSIG (Interplanetary Network Special Interest Group) site:

    DTN Tutorial [ipnsig.org] (PDF)

    DTN Architecture: The Evolving Interplantary Internet [ipnsig.org] (TXT)

    DTN for Extreme Environments [ipnsig.org] (PDF)

    -----
  • by DrSkwid ( 118965 ) on Sunday February 29, 2004 @05:34AM (#8421749) Journal
    This is an excellent user land TCP application that automatically re-connects to dropped TCP connections, even if the IP addresses change.

    http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~zandy/rocks [wisc.edu]

    There is also an in-depth paper [wisc.edu] by the authors.

    Rocks protect sockets-based applications from network failures, particularly failures common to mobile computing, including:

    * Link failures (e.g., unexpected modem disconnection);
    * IP address changes (e.g., laptop movement, DHCP lease expiry);
    * Extended periods of disconnection (e.g., laptop suspension).

    Rock-enabled programs continue to run after any of these events; their broken connections recover automatically, without loss of in-flight data, when connectivity returns. Rocks work transparently with most applications, including SSH clients, X-windows applications, and network service daemons.

    bah, slashcode breaks the title attribute in hrefs and co-opts it for it's own use, bad programming.

    It is helpful to blind readers and page indexers esp. if the label text is something like 'click here' to provide some information on the content of the link. grr sometimes I gets so mads
    • by Anonymous Coward

      It is helpful to blind readers and page indexers esp. if the label text is something like 'click here' to provide some information on the content of the link

      How many blind readers and page indexers use a mouse? So how is it helpful to include "click here"? Title attributes are for supplementary information, but it seems you've just joined the cargo cult that title attributes of any kind magically make a site better.

      • the whole point, dullard, is that one uses the title information to elucidate what the 'click here' is.

        i.e. for more information click here [slashdot.org]

        Though I wa sonly using that as an example. One should phrase one's content to suit the hypertext model.

        We have plenty of information on dullards [slashdot.org].

        It is also useful where one uses an image

        [slashdot.org]

        in this way, one can combine a bit of eye candy while providing the required information should images be unavailable
      • the whole point, dullard, is that one uses the title information to elucidate what the 'click here' is.

        i.e. for more information <a href="info.html" title="information on dullards">click here</a>

        Though I wa sonly using that as an example. One should phrase one's content to suit the hypertext model.

        We have plenty of <a href="info.html" title="dullard information">information on dullards</a>.

        It is also useful where one uses an image

        <a href="info.html" title="dullard information
    • Rocks is serving a different purpose here; it's managing breaks in connectivity inbetween periods of great interactive conectivity.

      These guys are solivng the problem -- what if there's never low latency, high bandwidth, bidirectional connectivity between two sites? In that case, the answer is a sort of generalization of email to arbitrary applications (possibly with a TCP gateway, as horrifying as that might be).

      Now that I think about it, file-oriented rsync might be the approach to take...

      ROCKS + SSH D
  • by andyr ( 78903 ) <andyr@wizzy.com> on Sunday February 29, 2004 @05:54AM (#8421793) Homepage Journal
    Folks,

    We have an Internet-content delivery system that works in a high-latency environment, to deliver mail and web content to South African schools.

    http://wizzy.org.za/ [wizzy.org.za]

    The problem it is designed to overcome is the high cost of local telephone calls in a monopoly wireline provider [telkom.co.za] regulatory environment.

    We use cheap-rate overnight phone calls and a UUCP delivery system in conjunction with a local mailserver and wwwoffle web cache.

    UUCP can also be used via a USB memory stick, similar to the DataMule [washington.edu] (pdf) paper referenced on the website. Carrying the memory stick (the Courier) is identical to one UUCP hop.

    The website gives more information.

    Cheers, Andy!

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