NASA has tested the interplanetary Internet

    NASA engineers conducted the first practical testing of a new space-based communications system based on the Internet model, unofficially the new system has already been called the “interplanetary Internet”. According to the press service of the space department, the specialists of the Laboratory of Jet Propulsion in California using special software conducted a communication session and transmitted more than a dozen photographs from NASA's spacecraft, located at a distance of about 37 million kilometers.

    The “interplanetary Internet” is based on the new DTN technology - Disruption-Tolerant Networking, and it was decided to abandon the TCP / IP protocol, which is familiar in the terrestrial Internet, for technical reasons.

    “This is the first step in creating a completely new space communications system, a kind of interplanetary Internet,” says Adrian Hook, a technical network standards specialist at NASA headquarters in Washington.

    The space department says that in cooperation with Google’s vice president, Wint Cerf, they have been developing a space-based data transfer protocol for almost 10 years. Recall that it was Vint Surf who at one time stood at the origins of the usual TCP / IP protocol. According to Cerf, the space communication protocol is arranged differently than its terrestrial counterpart.

    The main problem that the developers had to deal with was the delay in transmitting data, as well as the loss and attenuation of a signal transmitted by tens or even hundreds of millions of kilometers. At the same time, the interplanetary Internet must operate even more reliably than the earth, since the life of astronauts or the existence of a spaceship can often depend on its reliability.

    Surf says that even when a signal is transmitted between the Earth and Mars, the delay in receiving data depending on the position of the planets relative to each other can be from 20 minutes to 3.5 hours.

    In order to at least somehow implement the idea of ​​interplanetary Internet, in the DTN protocol it was decided to abandon the fundamental principle of TCP / IP - confirmation of signal receipt. If in terrestrial conditions the transmitting node answers the receiver’s request only after it establishes a connection with it, then in space such a technology means extremely long communication sessions and “pings”, which will be measured by the clock.

    At the same time, the DTN implements the “save and transmit” principle, that is, the nodes store information about points that they recently contacted, and in case of receipt of information, the node first searches for information about the destination source in its data, and then transfers the information to the desired destination. Remotely, this technology can be compared to playing football, when one player passes the ball to another, the next one, and so on, until the ball hits the goal (that is, to the destination). At the same time, the initial footballer does not care what kind of trajectory the ball will move and he himself does not need to hit the goal to score a goal.

    “In space, equipment and administrators themselves will have to create connections with nearby nodes and generate relay commands,” said Leith Togerson, project manager at DTN Experiment Operations Center. He noted that in the future it is planned to standardize DTN so that the equipment itself will take on most of the work, but it will not be possible to get rid of some features of the "space Internet" in any case.

    In the summer of 2009, it is planned to install DTN equipment on the ISS in order to start its use on an ongoing basis, later DTN stations will most likely be deployed at permanent stay on the Moon.

    Source: http://www.cybersecurity.ru/telecommunication/59292.html

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