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Vint Cerf’s Plan for Building An Internet in Space

quantamagazine.org

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Re: Vint Cerf’s Plan for Building An Internet in Space

#21

Post by renewiltord »

vaxman wrote: post #13

Vint Cerf and RMS ... what a pair. Vint helped spread the Internet beyond borders and to every Windows computer on the planet via async (aka PPP aka RAS). Sounds so awesome, doesn't it? Meanwhile old RMS, an academic with tenure/nearly guaranteed income for life, finished us all off by establishing a political system that attracted all of the young minds to give away their software in such a way as to allow adversari…

Nationalistic anti-OSS sentiment. Interesting. I can't say I've seen that over twenty years. Unique if nothing else.

Re: Vint Cerf’s Plan for Building An Internet in Space

#22

Post by rst »

vaxman wrote: post #13

Vint Cerf and RMS ... what a pair. Vint helped spread the Internet beyond borders and to every Windows computer on the planet via async (aka PPP aka RAS). Sounds so awesome, doesn't it? Meanwhile old RMS, an academic with tenure/nearly guaranteed income for life, finished us all off by establishing a political system that attracted all of the young minds to give away their software in such a way as to allow adversari…

You're pretty badly misinformed about Stallman -- he never had a faculty post at MIT (tenured or otherwise), and quit his paid staff position in 1984 to found the FSF. (After that, he had a fairly tenuous "visiting scientist" title up until very recently, but that came with no compensation, though there were some actual faculty who let him crash in their office space.)

Re: Vint Cerf’s Plan for Building An Internet in Space

#23

Post by Threeve303 »

Chris2048 wrote: post #20
vaxman wrote: post #13

Vint Cerf and RMS ... what a pair. Vint helped spread the Internet beyond borders and to every Windows computer on the planet via async (aka PPP aka RAS). Sounds so awesome, doesn't it? Meanwhile old RMS, an academic with tenure/nearly guaranteed income for life, finished us all off by establishing a political system that attracted all of the young minds to give away their software in such a way as to allow adversari…

Are you saying China/Russia got their hands on Military tech by hacking?

This is a prevalent notion in the west. I’m sure there is some truth to it. In the long run, it seems like a great way to underestimate an opponent.

Re: Vint Cerf’s Plan for Building An Internet in Space

#24

Post by hugi »

vaxman wrote: post #13

Vint Cerf and RMS ... what a pair. Vint helped spread the Internet beyond borders and to every Windows computer on the planet via async (aka PPP aka RAS). Sounds so awesome, doesn't it? Meanwhile old RMS, an academic with tenure/nearly guaranteed income for life, finished us all off by establishing a political system that attracted all of the young minds to give away their software in such a way as to allow adversari…

That's the most insanely absurd view of OSS I've ever seen.

Re: Vint Cerf’s Plan for Building An Internet in Space

#25

Post by dugmartin »

somesortofsystm wrote: post #5

I've always wondered about the feasibility of using space for temporary/short-term storage needs. I remember a time when, as a junior developer, I'd log into operations, and hand the operator my tape reel with my work for the day - and she'd go off, mount the spool, and start the streaming, until my files were available in local storage for a few hours, and then .. when logging out, I'd have the operator re-stream th…

What is old is new again (just with a much bigger buffer):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay_line_memory

Re: Vint Cerf’s Plan for Building An Internet in Space

#26

Post by exdsq »

mda wrote: post #15
vaxman wrote: post #13

Vint Cerf and RMS ... what a pair. Vint helped spread the Internet beyond borders and to every Windows computer on the planet via async (aka PPP aka RAS). Sounds so awesome, doesn't it? Meanwhile old RMS, an academic with tenure/nearly guaranteed income for life, finished us all off by establishing a political system that attracted all of the young minds to give away their software in such a way as to allow adversari…

I am having difficulty understanding this post.

RMS started giving software away for free (or, helped push for open software) which gave countries like China a jump-start. As someone else said, I've never seen nationalistic views on OSS before but it is absurd.

Re: Vint Cerf’s Plan for Building An Internet in Space

#27

Post by NortySpock »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #7

The protocols are interesting, but it seems to me that point-to-point is more applicable in the vast emptiness that is outer space. Why send a packet to Mars when Jupiter is 5° to the left and I have a clear line of sight to both?

The planet or moon may be facing the wrong way for you to be able to send a message directly to the rover or base on the surface.

Using your example, and assuming you want to send a message to a moon base on the surface of Callisto, a moon of Jupiter: while you may have a clear line to Jupiter, the point on the surface of Callisto that you want to send a message may not be in your line-of-sight because it is facing away from you. So your route becomes Earth -> Jupiter Communications Satellite 3 -> Callisto ComSat 10 -> Callisto Base Alpha

Assuming you want to send a message to the far side of Luna, even then the best path may be a commsat in high orbit around Luna -> Comsat in low orbit around Luna -> FarSide Base.

I agree, rarely are you going to need to bounce from Mars to Jupiter, but for low-priority bulk traffic (scientific images, etc) and enough nodes, it might be worthwhile to bounce from Mars to Jupiter to Luna to Earth if all communication nodes were otherwise idle. The Delay Tolerant Network Vint Cerf is working on supports knowledge of when certain antennas have available communication windows to different nodes, and can schedule and route communication accordingly.

Source: Myself, did a presentation on it in college

Re: Vint Cerf’s Plan for Building An Internet in Space

#28

Post by est31 »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #7

The protocols are interesting, but it seems to me that point-to-point is more applicable in the vast emptiness that is outer space. Why send a packet to Mars when Jupiter is 5° to the left and I have a clear line of sight to both?

You don't always have a clear line of sight. E.g. when you communicate with a satellite orbiting mars, the planet will get in between for a period of time.

Furthermore, even if you have clear line of sight, repeaters on the way can be helpful because the inverse square law even holds for lasers (the light isn't perfectly parallel, there is no such solution to the maxwell equations (outside of an infinite plane emitting light perpendicular to it), instead it's a gaussian beam).

Last, you only have a limited amount of spectrum you can send to or receive from a specific point in the sky. Beyond that, it gets hard really quick. If you have repeater stations far away so that they can be targeted from the distance, you can increase the maximum bandwidth. This is mainly a concern once the interplanetary bandwidth is maxed out.

Re: Vint Cerf’s Plan for Building An Internet in Space

#29

Post by MayeulC »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #7

The protocols are interesting, but it seems to me that point-to-point is more applicable in the vast emptiness that is outer space. Why send a packet to Mars when Jupiter is 5° to the left and I have a clear line of sight to both?

Well, I think that you generally don't control beam dispersion /angular resolution that well (please correct me if I'm wrong). So the received power is probably a lot better if you aim closer.

On the other hand, the latency penalty might be quite steep. There is probably a latency/bandwidth tradeoff that needs to be solved for every packet. I think today's internet has the same set of tradeoffs (plus some, like cost). If packets could carry their own metrics, routers could make better-informed choices.

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