8 ms·

Inter-Planetary Network Special Interest Group

170 points by OhMeadhbh 1y ago

OhMeadhbh 1y ago
With all the jibber-jabber about Starlink being down, I figured it was an appropriate time to remind people this exists. Vint Cerf, one of the founding wizzards of the internet, established the IPN SIG in 1998 to cuss and discuss issues related to IP protocols over high-latency, potentially high-loss links. Worth poking around if you've not seen it before, though I sort of wish there were more use cases regarding information security.
- jvanderbot 1y ago
  I used to work with some of those board members at JPL! DTN is cool stuff. We had a few applications built up for distributed "delay aware" computing so that you could, at the network/application boundary, farm out jobs for e.g., an orbiting compute cluster coming over the horizon. Really fun times.
  - bigfatkitten 1y ago
    And there are lots of open implementations to play with! https://github.com/nasa/HDTN https://github.com/nasa/HDTN https://github.com/nasa-jpl/ION-DTN https://github.com/nasa-jpl/ION-DTN https://gitlab.com/d3tn/ud3tn https://gitlab.com/d3tn/ud3tn https://upcn.eu/ https://upcn.eu/
  - rippeltippel 1y ago
    It's also noteworthy that DTN can be used on Earth too, especially in remote places with poor/unreliable data connections. There's some interesting literature about those applications, which was my first approach to DTN when I started working with it.
- dcminter 1y ago
  Off topic, but... > to cuss and discuss ...is a turn of phrase that's new to me and I love it. Totally stealing that.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - OhMeadhbh 1y ago
    It's from my 7th grade history teacher, Mr. Mooneyham. As in "tomorrow we're going to cuss and discuss the Louisiana Purchase. Make sure you read chapter 12." He was also the teacher who had the "Super-Duper Discussion Stick" which he used to hit your desk if you fell asleep in class. And at least once he played the version of the "Devil Went Down to Georgia" w/ the bad words left in. In the old days, public schools in suburban Texas were quirky, but the quality of education was relatively decent. For instance, I remember that Thomas Jefferson was president in 1803 when the Louisiana Purchase was finalized.
  - dgctbu 1y ago
    [dead]
- philipwhiuk 1y ago
  I'm not sure how seriously I take an organisation supposedly focused on interplanetary space where the main advertised event seems to be Raspberry Pi workshops. There are many conferences and academic discussions that spend a long time bikeshedding while industry actually does stuff. The lack of involvement from industry in a field where stuff is happening suggests to me this is one of them.
  - 0points 1y ago
    > The lack of involvement from industry in a field where stuff is happening suggests to me this is one of them. Remind me again, which companies are going inter-planetary?
  - Sanzig 1y ago
    Most of what they do is Layer 2 and above, so it's hardware agnostic - prototyping on a Pi is fine. Their work is gaining traction. DTN Bundle Protocol has been baselined for the LunaNet specification, which a bunch of private companies are designing to for lunar relay networks. Bundle Protocol is also currently on the CCSDS standards track so it should be formally part of the CCSDS protocol suite soon. For those unaware: CCSDS is the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems, they set widely used standards for spacecraft communications protocols. Basically anything beyond Earth orbit flies some variant of a CCSDS protocol stack, and a substantial chunk of missions in Earth orbit do as well, particularly if they are government funded. It's an international effort, China and Russia participate too so that everyone can communicate if need be.
LorenDB 1y ago
IMO the most likely solution to interplanetary networking is to throw tons of datacenter and compute that's anywhere more than a few light-seconds from the nearest existing datacenter, then use something along the lines of IPFS to perform data synchronization between planets.
- bigfatkitten 1y ago
  Despite the name, IPFS has no properties that make it suitable for this application. It’s very bandwidth intensive and isn’t designed with latency or disruption tolerance in mind.
- macintux 1y ago
  How would that work to, say, Mars? Have satellites filling many, many orbits between the two planets?
  - cjtrowbridge 1y ago
    We already have an interplanetary internet called the NASA Deep Space Network. Understanding it's limitations and challenges is a good way to start thinking about this.
  - BizarroLand 1y ago
    Nah, nothing that extreme. The broadcast range and bandwidth of even current technology in space could handle a huge amount of fairly rapid data transfer between the two planets. It would be more like a handful of satellites, some orbiting earth, some orbiting mars, and then a handful of relay satellites serving as intermediaries. Don't count on playing e-sports competitively, though. The lag under ideal conditions would be insane, about 2.5 minutes each way (when the planets are "only" 40 million kilometers apart), but with repeaters and overhead probably closer to twice that.
    - macintux 1y ago
      The comment was a few light-seconds. That's a lot of hops to Mars to fill to sustain that coverage year-round.
ieee-e 1y ago
There are too many graphics (>0) and not enough monospaced font for me to take this seriously. https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1.txt https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1.txt
- jibal 1y ago
  Steve Crocker, Vint Cerf, Jon Postel (RFC editor) and I all worked together at UCLA. I was there the day the IMP arrived. Heady days.
jibal 1y ago
I was at UCLA with Vint Cerf ... very cool guy.
t1234s 1y ago
Could quantum entanglement eliminate the delay?
- tekne 1y ago
  Nope: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-communication_theorem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-communication_theorem
  - lowwave 1y ago
    What about this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Experiments_at_Space_Scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Experiments_at_Space_S... ?
    - blendergeek 1y ago
      No. That does not allow faster than light communication (which is impossible)
      - MadnessASAP 1y ago
        FTL communication is presumed to be impossible, it actually hasn't been proven impossible. On the other hand, if it were shown to be possible it would be rather disruptive to many other presumptions in physics.
        dodobirdlord 1y ago
        People are fairly attached to causality.
        MadnessASAP 1y ago
        Well that's just it, my understanding is that FTL hasn't been proven to violate causality, or that causality is inviolable. It's just very strongly hinted at.
userulluipeste 1y ago
"We work to extend terrestrial networking into solar system space..." Minor nitpick: it's the Solar System - i.e. capitalized (since it's a proper name). The Solar System is the planetary system that we reside in, the one that has the star Sol at its center. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System#Definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System#Definition
- yencabulator 1y ago
  > When not used as a proper noun and written without capitalization, "solar system" may refer to either the Solar System itself or any system reminiscent of the Solar System.[14] They're solving for other solar systems too!
rippeltippel 1y ago
Author of the initial versions of DTNPerf (iperf for DTNs) and some related papers. I moved on to other areas of SW engineering, but glad to know DTN technology is still looked after. I recently learned that ESA are looking into that as well.
webdevver 1y ago
star wars except its comcast 'accidentally' destroying starlink sattelite links with 'debris'

170 points by OhMeadhbh 1y ago

With all the jibber-jabber about Starlink being down, I figured it was an appropriate time to remind people this exists. Vint Cerf, one of the founding wizzards of the internet, established the IPN SIG in 1998 to cuss and discuss issues related to IP protocols over high-latency, potentially high-loss links. Worth poking around if you've not seen it before, though I sort of wish there were more use cases regarding information security.

jvanderbot 1y ago
I used to work with some of those board members at JPL! DTN is cool stuff. We had a few applications built up for distributed "delay aware" computing so that you could, at the network/application boundary, farm out jobs for e.g., an orbiting compute cluster coming over the horizon. Really fun times.
- bigfatkitten 1y ago
  And there are lots of open implementations to play with! https://github.com/nasa/HDTN https://github.com/nasa/HDTN https://github.com/nasa-jpl/ION-DTN https://github.com/nasa-jpl/ION-DTN https://gitlab.com/d3tn/ud3tn https://gitlab.com/d3tn/ud3tn https://upcn.eu/ https://upcn.eu/
- rippeltippel 1y ago
  It's also noteworthy that DTN can be used on Earth too, especially in remote places with poor/unreliable data connections. There's some interesting literature about those applications, which was my first approach to DTN when I started working with it.
dcminter 1y ago
Off topic, but... > to cuss and discuss ...is a turn of phrase that's new to me and I love it. Totally stealing that.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- OhMeadhbh 1y ago
  It's from my 7th grade history teacher, Mr. Mooneyham. As in "tomorrow we're going to cuss and discuss the Louisiana Purchase. Make sure you read chapter 12." He was also the teacher who had the "Super-Duper Discussion Stick" which he used to hit your desk if you fell asleep in class. And at least once he played the version of the "Devil Went Down to Georgia" w/ the bad words left in. In the old days, public schools in suburban Texas were quirky, but the quality of education was relatively decent. For instance, I remember that Thomas Jefferson was president in 1803 when the Louisiana Purchase was finalized.
- dgctbu 1y ago
  [dead]
philipwhiuk 1y ago
I'm not sure how seriously I take an organisation supposedly focused on interplanetary space where the main advertised event seems to be Raspberry Pi workshops. There are many conferences and academic discussions that spend a long time bikeshedding while industry actually does stuff. The lack of involvement from industry in a field where stuff is happening suggests to me this is one of them.
- 0points 1y ago
  > The lack of involvement from industry in a field where stuff is happening suggests to me this is one of them. Remind me again, which companies are going inter-planetary?
- Sanzig 1y ago
  Most of what they do is Layer 2 and above, so it's hardware agnostic - prototyping on a Pi is fine. Their work is gaining traction. DTN Bundle Protocol has been baselined for the LunaNet specification, which a bunch of private companies are designing to for lunar relay networks. Bundle Protocol is also currently on the CCSDS standards track so it should be formally part of the CCSDS protocol suite soon. For those unaware: CCSDS is the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems, they set widely used standards for spacecraft communications protocols. Basically anything beyond Earth orbit flies some variant of a CCSDS protocol stack, and a substantial chunk of missions in Earth orbit do as well, particularly if they are government funded. It's an international effort, China and Russia participate too so that everyone can communicate if need be.

LorenDB 1y ago

IMO the most likely solution to interplanetary networking is to throw tons of datacenter and compute that's anywhere more than a few light-seconds from the nearest existing datacenter, then use something along the lines of IPFS to perform data synchronization between planets.

bigfatkitten 1y ago
Despite the name, IPFS has no properties that make it suitable for this application. It’s very bandwidth intensive and isn’t designed with latency or disruption tolerance in mind.
macintux 1y ago
How would that work to, say, Mars? Have satellites filling many, many orbits between the two planets?
- cjtrowbridge 1y ago
  We already have an interplanetary internet called the NASA Deep Space Network. Understanding it's limitations and challenges is a good way to start thinking about this.
- BizarroLand 1y ago
  Nah, nothing that extreme. The broadcast range and bandwidth of even current technology in space could handle a huge amount of fairly rapid data transfer between the two planets. It would be more like a handful of satellites, some orbiting earth, some orbiting mars, and then a handful of relay satellites serving as intermediaries. Don't count on playing e-sports competitively, though. The lag under ideal conditions would be insane, about 2.5 minutes each way (when the planets are "only" 40 million kilometers apart), but with repeaters and overhead probably closer to twice that.
  - macintux 1y ago
    The comment was a few light-seconds. That's a lot of hops to Mars to fill to sustain that coverage year-round.

ieee-e 1y ago

There are too many graphics (>0) and not enough monospaced font for me to take this seriously. https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1.txt https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1.txt

jibal 1y ago
Steve Crocker, Vint Cerf, Jon Postel (RFC editor) and I all worked together at UCLA. I was there the day the IMP arrived. Heady days.

jibal 1y ago

I was at UCLA with Vint Cerf ... very cool guy.

t1234s 1y ago

Could quantum entanglement eliminate the delay?

tekne 1y ago
Nope: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-communication_theorem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-communication_theorem
- lowwave 1y ago
  What about this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Experiments_at_Space_Scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Experiments_at_Space_S... ?
  - blendergeek 1y ago
    No. That does not allow faster than light communication (which is impossible)
    - MadnessASAP 1y ago
      FTL communication is presumed to be impossible, it actually hasn't been proven impossible. On the other hand, if it were shown to be possible it would be rather disruptive to many other presumptions in physics.
      - dodobirdlord 1y ago
        People are fairly attached to causality.
        MadnessASAP 1y ago
        Well that's just it, my understanding is that FTL hasn't been proven to violate causality, or that causality is inviolable. It's just very strongly hinted at.

userulluipeste 1y ago

"We work to extend terrestrial networking into solar system space..." Minor nitpick: it's the Solar System - i.e. capitalized (since it's a proper name). The Solar System is the planetary system that we reside in, the one that has the star Sol at its center. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System#Definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System#Definition

yencabulator 1y ago
> When not used as a proper noun and written without capitalization, "solar system" may refer to either the Solar System itself or any system reminiscent of the Solar System.[14] They're solving for other solar systems too!

rippeltippel 1y ago

Author of the initial versions of DTNPerf (iperf for DTNs) and some related papers. I moved on to other areas of SW engineering, but glad to know DTN technology is still looked after. I recently learned that ESA are looking into that as well.

webdevver 1y ago

star wars except its comcast 'accidentally' destroying starlink sattelite links with 'debris'