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While we are dreaming, it would be better to have said flash drive picked up by a spacestation, refueled in orbit, and shot back to Mars. Hmm. If storage conti

While we are dreaming, it would be better to have said flash drive picked up by a spacestation, refueled in orbit, and shot back to Mars. Hmm. If storage continues to improve as fast as it has been, once the space infrastructure is there, this might be cost effective. We have a lot of data to send. In particular, we are going to need to have a local cache of the internet on Mars. At best, the average minimum latency is 225 million kilometers / the speed of light = 12.51 minutes. Vast data barges, roaming the solar system, keeping everyone in sync.... Building an interplanetary Internet is going to be very, very fun. On a related note, never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck filled with... Well I was going to say blueray disks. But the cheapest I can find bluray disks are 3 cents per gigabyte. 3 TB harddrives are easily had at 5 cents per gigabyte. If the data only needs to go 60 miles, then 120 drives ($18,000) in a truck would get 1 TB/sec, or 8,000 mbps... Ouch. I'll go with a megabit connection. Once upon a time that sort of thing worked for bulk data ;)

tankbot 14y ago
We need to find some hive-mind aliens and dissect them in order to develop philotic protocols for instant transmission. 0 latency on funny cat videos from Uranus.
mdwelsh 14y ago
An Interplanetary Internet is not a joke: It's been a serious field of study for a while. There is a SIG on the topic, and lots of work has been done to think about how Internet protocols would work across interplanetary distances and frequent disconnections: http://www.ipnsig.org/aboutstudy.htm http://www.ipnsig.org/aboutstudy.htm
mkramlich 14y ago
> In particular, we are going to need to have a local cache of the internet on Mars. I predict somewhere today at Google an engineer just got an idea for his 20% project. "Red Cache"
- eupharis 14y ago
  I hope so. The trick would be, after there is a cache of the Internet on Mars, to only have to send the changes, not the whole Internet again. Straight snapshots would probably be the only viable option though. And maybe make the policy, once a decade do a complete update. And every year, do "any webpage accessed by colonists in the past year will be updated. And the top 5-15% of webpages by popularity on Earth." And during the year, the top 5% of webpages, and any webpage with specifically Mars relevant content would be updated "wirelessly." The numbers would change constantly, depending on bandwidth and costs and whatnot. But the question "how to build the best asynchronous shadow Internet given such and such constraints" is fascinating.
  - alinajaf 14y ago
    The only thing your plan doesn't account for is how we get the updates from the web developers on Mars :-)
  - merlincorey 14y ago
    Did you know -- there are more ports on the internet than just 53 and 80? -- A message from your friendly local hacker wizard
- packetslave 14y ago
  Perhaps, but I just got an idea for an interview question...

tankbot 14y ago

We need to find some hive-mind aliens and dissect them in order to develop philotic protocols for instant transmission. 0 latency on funny cat videos from Uranus.

mdwelsh 14y ago

An Interplanetary Internet is not a joke: It's been a serious field of study for a while. There is a SIG on the topic, and lots of work has been done to think about how Internet protocols would work across interplanetary distances and frequent disconnections: http://www.ipnsig.org/aboutstudy.htm http://www.ipnsig.org/aboutstudy.htm

mkramlich 14y ago

> In particular, we are going to need to have a local cache of the internet on Mars. I predict somewhere today at Google an engineer just got an idea for his 20% project. "Red Cache"

eupharis 14y ago
I hope so. The trick would be, after there is a cache of the Internet on Mars, to only have to send the changes, not the whole Internet again. Straight snapshots would probably be the only viable option though. And maybe make the policy, once a decade do a complete update. And every year, do "any webpage accessed by colonists in the past year will be updated. And the top 5-15% of webpages by popularity on Earth." And during the year, the top 5% of webpages, and any webpage with specifically Mars relevant content would be updated "wirelessly." The numbers would change constantly, depending on bandwidth and costs and whatnot. But the question "how to build the best asynchronous shadow Internet given such and such constraints" is fascinating.
- alinajaf 14y ago
  The only thing your plan doesn't account for is how we get the updates from the web developers on Mars :-)
- merlincorey 14y ago
  Did you know -- there are more ports on the internet than just 53 and 80? -- A message from your friendly local hacker wizard
packetslave 14y ago
Perhaps, but I just got an idea for an interview question...