Interplanetary Internet
From Computing and Software Wiki
The Interplanetary Internet is a network of independent nodes in outer space that will act as the communication infastructure between planets in our galaxy. It the next step in the natural evolution of the Internet. As mankind continues to make extraordinary accomplishments in outer space exploration, the communication infrastructure which currently resides is becoming less applicable.
The idea of the Interplanetary Internet was first created by Vint Cerf when envisioning the future direction of the internet. His vision was a network on internets linked together by gateway's and run through the use of the Internet Protocol (IP) suite. The network would form a backbone connecting a series of hubs on or around planets, ships, and at other points in space. These hubs would provide high-capacity, high-availability Internet traffic over distances that could stretch up to hundreds of millions of kilometers.[1]The Interplanetary Internet will be used for many different types of applications. Among them will be reliable communication between earth and other planets in our solar system.
Since the distances between planets such as earth and mars are of such great magnitude, their needs to be a more efficient way of sending data back and forth. With this network infrastructure in place, the current communication problems that plague outer space missions will be avoided. This would in turn allow mission designers to create smaller aircrafts since payloads would be used less for communications equipment.
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Challenges
Networking together the galaxy is no simple feat. Th development and maintenance of the Interplanetary Internet faces many unique challenges that need to be over come.
Technical Challenges
Physical Challenges
There are certain unavoidable physical limitiations when dealing with the Interplanetary Internet. The distances involeved are in ther ange of hundreds of milliosn of kilometers. At these distances, the time interval for a message leaving earth to arrive at mars will range anywhere from 3 to 10 minutes. This sort of lag is something the traditional internet is not accustomed to. When a user makes a request on the Internet, the server respnds by perfoming the request. This is a process that appears to happen instantly. This type of immediacy will dissolve as soon as the Internt exapnds into space. The Interplanetry Internet will run on a new process that uses a store and frward methodology in order to acheive more reliable rate of communcication.[1] This process will be based on an entirely new set of rules called the Parcel Transfer Protocol (PTP).
Parcel Transfer Protocol
In todays's version of Internet Protocols, dropped packets are not
See also
References
- Bluetooth. Retrieved on April 5, 2008, from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth>
External links
- SpaceRef.com - Focus On the InterPlanetary Internet
- HowStuffWorks.com - How Interplanetary Internet Will Work
- On The Edge - Interplanetary Internet
- IEEE Spectrum
Signature
--ziebac 20:57, 4 April 2009 (EDT)
