Comment IPv6 may not work out of the box for space comm (Score 1) 207
A lot of people are talking about how widely IPv6 is deployed here on Earth. As the article is about IPv6 in space, maybe it would be better to talk about the implications of going with any IP protocol in space?
For Earth orbit, either IP protocol (IPv4 or IPv6) is likely OK. But what happens if we really want to deploy an interplanetary internet? Say you have a station on the moon trying to relay off a satellite in Earth orbit. What does your round trip latency look like? Try three seconds round trip. How happy will TCP connections be with a three second (3000ms) ping time?
Now, lets go further. Have a satellite in Mars orbit communicate with a satellite in Earth orbit. You can easily have a one way trip of 20 minutes, or a 40 minute ping time. Show me a connection oriented protocol which can handle this.
Either IP will have to have a major overhaul or something else may be needed to move traffic around the solar system. Connection oriented just won't work for such long communication lag. You either have to accept only a few packets per hour, or you will have to have a very large sliding window to get all of the data through and reassembled.
For Earth orbit, either IP protocol (IPv4 or IPv6) is likely OK. But what happens if we really want to deploy an interplanetary internet? Say you have a station on the moon trying to relay off a satellite in Earth orbit. What does your round trip latency look like? Try three seconds round trip. How happy will TCP connections be with a three second (3000ms) ping time?
Now, lets go further. Have a satellite in Mars orbit communicate with a satellite in Earth orbit. You can easily have a one way trip of 20 minutes, or a 40 minute ping time. Show me a connection oriented protocol which can handle this.
Either IP will have to have a major overhaul or something else may be needed to move traffic around the solar system. Connection oriented just won't work for such long communication lag. You either have to accept only a few packets per hour, or you will have to have a very large sliding window to get all of the data through and reassembled.
