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Ask HN: Do we have a protocol for interplanetary internet?

8 points by xupybd 3y ago

In the book Theft of fire, they have internet caches throughout the solar system. Would that work? Do we have an existing protocol for that? Would it work for a lunar base?

greyface- 3y ago
Key words to search for are "delay-tolerant networking" and "bundle protocol". No real-world deployments yet, but lots of recent attention from IETF and the like.
- xupybd 3y ago
  Thanks!
pohl 3y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnGoYZJ5-Vs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnGoYZJ5-Vs
- xupybd 3y ago
  That video is perfect. It answered every question I had and more. I'm shocked that Google is behind this. I would have thought the ROI would be a hard sell. It neat to hear how involved they are in space. Setting that up would be challenging. You have to have each network node aware of locations of the rest of the network. Thanks so much for sharing that. I'm sad it's only got 40 likes.
  - pohl 3y ago
    You’re welcome. I get the impression that it’s more a matter of Vint Cerf being behind it and Google just letting his curiosity drive him wherever. He started it with a team of scientists at JPL, I think. Google’s ROI is probably the prestige of having their brand next to whatever Vint does.
Firerouge 3y ago
The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) https://ipfs.tech/ https://ipfs.tech/
scrapheap 3y ago
There are protocols for Interplanetary Internets - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Internet The way we interact with the Internet would have to change though due the extra delays involved in communication between planets. A lunar base would have a delay of about 2.5 seconds, so could probably just connect direct to the Internet on Earth via a few gateways located on the Earth (possible just a simple SOCKS proxies with a high value on the TCP Timeouts on it's lunar side). It would be slow, so you'd want to include quite a bit of caching for data on both sides that doesn't change. Once you start talking about other planets though your delays would start to become unusable for interactive operations (between 5 and 20 minutes for Mars), so at that point you'd have to start thinking about using more asynchronous methods of communication (e.g. send an email rather than use a chat session). I have to admit that part of me loves the idea of using a variation of FidoNet for interplanetary communication :)
Samuel38 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States

8 points by xupybd 3y ago

In the book Theft of fire, they have internet caches throughout the solar system. Would that work? Do we have an existing protocol for that? Would it work for a lunar base?

greyface- 3y ago

Key words to search for are "delay-tolerant networking" and "bundle protocol". No real-world deployments yet, but lots of recent attention from IETF and the like.

xupybd 3y ago
Thanks!

pohl 3y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnGoYZJ5-Vs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnGoYZJ5-Vs

xupybd 3y ago
That video is perfect. It answered every question I had and more. I'm shocked that Google is behind this. I would have thought the ROI would be a hard sell. It neat to hear how involved they are in space. Setting that up would be challenging. You have to have each network node aware of locations of the rest of the network. Thanks so much for sharing that. I'm sad it's only got 40 likes.
- pohl 3y ago
  You’re welcome. I get the impression that it’s more a matter of Vint Cerf being behind it and Google just letting his curiosity drive him wherever. He started it with a team of scientists at JPL, I think. Google’s ROI is probably the prestige of having their brand next to whatever Vint does.

Firerouge 3y ago

The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) https://ipfs.tech/ https://ipfs.tech/

scrapheap 3y ago

There are protocols for Interplanetary Internets - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Internet The way we interact with the Internet would have to change though due the extra delays involved in communication between planets. A lunar base would have a delay of about 2.5 seconds, so could probably just connect direct to the Internet on Earth via a few gateways located on the Earth (possible just a simple SOCKS proxies with a high value on the TCP Timeouts on it's lunar side). It would be slow, so you'd want to include quite a bit of caching for data on both sides that doesn't change. Once you start talking about other planets though your delays would start to become unusable for interactive operations (between 5 and 20 minutes for Mars), so at that point you'd have to start thinking about using more asynchronous methods of communication (e.g. send an email rather than use a chat session). I have to admit that part of me loves the idea of using a variation of FidoNet for interplanetary communication :)

Samuel38 3y ago

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