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The Internet

Vint Cerf Plugs Android Into Interplanetary Net 69

Several readers sent in an update on DTN, the interplanetary Internet protocol that Vint Cerf has been working on for many years (and we have been discussing for nearly as long). The news now is that Cerf has added a DTN stack to the open source Android code, seeing uses in mobile applications for a protocol that does not assume a continuous connection.
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Vint Cerf Plugs Android Into Interplanetary Net

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  • Unlimited? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Geoffrey.landis ( 926948 ) on Friday November 06, 2009 @09:53AM (#30005614) Homepage
    Is "interplanetary" part of the unlimited calling package?
    • (Marketing guy of the company) Of course yes! We are happy to put ours customers in contact with your parents on ISS and beyound for a ridiculous small fee.

      (enginnering guy of the company) On the reality? hunm... err... well..
    • only if the android in question is named Data, Kryten, or Marvin.
  • by nomadic ( 141991 ) <nomadicworld@ g m a i l . com> on Friday November 06, 2009 @10:02AM (#30005710) Homepage
    DEAR SIR/MADAM:

    I am X'Fdfd'hdfsa St'uun. Auditor of the First Bank of Venus. I am contacting you on this business of transferreing US $35 MILLION DOLLARS into a safe Earth account and the need is very urgent.

    I got your contact from the Venusian Chambers of Commerce and interplanetary family directory and it is with business trust that made me to contact you on this matter.

    I write to solicit for the transfer of this money into your account. This Money was generated from an unused Account in my Bank (FBV).I am contacting you for your help and partnership for the following reason:

    My present financial resources will not be sufficient for me to handle the transfer alone successfully without financial assistance from a reliable foreign partner on another planet. 40% of this sum would be for you as compensation for using your Bank account in transferring this money, 10% would be used to reimburse the expenses made by both parties during the processing of the transferring which include,DTN bills, travelling expenses and fees, and starship fuel. While 50% is for me. Please note that I will arrange to meet with you immediately after the successful conclusion of the transfer, the 50% share of mine will be used for investment on Earth. Your assistance and co-operation is highly needed. I assure you that this transaction is 100% risk free. If you are interested I will require your banking information as mentioned below: 1. Name to be used as beneficiary and beneficiary's address. 2. Your private and confidential telephone/ fax number(s) 3. Your banking details and address, your bank Telephone and fax number(s).
  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 06, 2009 @10:08AM (#30005762)

    This will be perfect for AT&T's network. And with slightly less latency than Voyager.

  • by AP31R0N ( 723649 ) on Friday November 06, 2009 @10:09AM (#30005776)

    When will this go intergalactic?

    • by b0ttle ( 1332811 )
      When someone add light years to ping.
      • by Looke ( 260398 )
        Since when does ping measure distance?
        • Where I live we frequently measure distance in minutes...
          • AHA! You're from Jersey, aren't you?

            Everything in Jersey is a half hour, 15 minutes, 45 minutes away. Nobody talks about distance...

            • That's New York City (and for good reason). In NJ we measure everything by exits on the highways :)

              But getting back to the original discussion, on a galactic scale, distance and time are scaled versions of the same thing anyway, since everything is traveling at a fixed maximum speed. Something 1 ly away will have a minimum latency of 1 year (2 for the round trip) unless we figure out how to send information FTL. And when you're dealing with distances of thousands of ly, you really wouldn't care about a few

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by RivieraKid ( 994682 )

          If you have a constant speed (i.e. the speed of light), then units that normally describe duration can reasonably be used to indicate distance, especially over great distances.

          Think of the light year mentioned above. A light year is the distance that light can travel in a year - so we're using a unit of time to describe distance. It works because the speed of light is the same regardless of your frame of reference, which also means the distance is the same regardless of your frame of reference.

          • > A light year is the distance that light can travel in a year

            In a vacuum!

            > It works because the speed of light is the same regardless of your frame of reference

            Only in a contiguous medium. The speed of light varies in different media, so the time / distance relationship becomes more complex if part of your journey is through water ( c 30% slower ), solid glass, peanut butter, diamond...

            • by RivieraKid ( 994682 ) on Friday November 06, 2009 @11:46AM (#30006666)

              Well, yes and no.

              The effective speed of light changes in different medium, but only because of the refractive index. The light is still travelling at the same constant speed but because of the refractive index, it's not travelling in a straight line so it only appears to travel slower.

              What you refer to is the speed of propogation of light through various transparent medium [wikipedia.org]. The light is delayed due to absorbtion and re-emission, but is not slowed down.

              Even experiments to slow and completely stop a beam of light (say, in a Bose-Einstein Condensate [wikipedia.org]) are really just affecting it's effective speed, effectively capturing it with "tiny mirrors" but the absolute speed of the light is unaffected.

            • Light doesn't travel through peanut butter...

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Nadaka ( 224565 )

          Since when does ping measure distance?

          http://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You need 8 chevrons for this !

      • Like a pinch on the neck from mister Spock

        Intergalactic planetary
        Planetary intergalactic
        another dimension another dimension
        another dimension another dimension

        Well Now don't you tell me to smile
        You stick around I'll make it worth your while
        Got numbers beyond what you can dial
        Maybe it's because I'm so versatile
        ...
        If you want to battle your in denial
        Coming from Uranus to check my style
        Go ahead put my rhymes on trial
        Cast you off into exile

        ...so how do I dial the eigth chevron on DTMF?

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Should have called it HDB (Hot Dead Bird) protocol.

  • Synergy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AlecC ( 512609 ) <aleccawley@gmail.com> on Friday November 06, 2009 @10:31AM (#30005960)

    See? Space research does have spinoffs for everyday life. If we weren't trying to get to Mars, we wouldn't have this useful protocol for Earthside use.

    Double NASA's budget at once.

  • It's a good thing I like my pizza cold...
  • Yeah. Now we can ditch the Speak'n'Spell when we want to phone home.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You miss the point. They're not adding DTN to the mobile for extraterrestrial communication - they're adding it to the mobile for better terrestrial communication.

      The situations this protocol is designed to deal with - intermittent connection with variable (and potentially high) latency - are things that apply very much to mobile devices.

  • Packet radio? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Gordonjcp ( 186804 ) on Friday November 06, 2009 @11:17AM (#30006382) Homepage

    If it works well with a potentially poor channel, maybe it would be suitable for improving packet radio systems. Remember that article a week or two back about what would happen if "the Government" shut off the Internet? Go get those amateur radio licences, folks...

  • by rickb928 ( 945187 ) on Friday November 06, 2009 @11:19AM (#30006412) Homepage Journal

    Some of my family thinks I'm on another planet. Now they can call me.

    I need this like I need Graffiti [wikipedia.org] on my G1. Wait, that would be cool...

  • by thethibs ( 882667 ) on Friday November 06, 2009 @11:34AM (#30006540) Homepage
    Sounds like uucp over zmodem.
    • by hey ( 83763 )

      I loved those "bang" addresses.

      jupiter!mars!luna!earth!slashdot!taco

      • Yah. There was a time I was corresponding with a guy in Minsk. The bang path was 22 hops, including a diskette carried between East and West Berlin.
  • DTN != Protocol (Score:5, Informative)

    by pdxp ( 1213906 ) on Friday November 06, 2009 @12:12PM (#30006920)

    Several readers sent in an update on DTN, the interplanetary Internet protocol ...

    Please stop screwing up the meaning of DTN. Not just /., but everyone writing article about Vint Cerf and "his" interplanetary internet. The acronym stands for Delay Tolerant Network, and is a type of network in which connectivity is ephemeral and a contemporaneous path between two points often doesn't exist at any point in time, necessitating any communication to be tolerant to delay (and/or disruption).

    A DTN protocol is one that takes advantage of the ephemeral connectivity of DTNs, usually along the lines of employing the store, carry, and forward approach to getting data from A to B via a time-varying path; e.g. a path exists, just not at any point in time.

    What Cerf has done has create a bundle forwarding protocol stack for the Android. It's not as "out there" as you'd think- someone send you data, you carry it, then forward it later. Lots of questions/issues in between as you might imagine.

    I think some people like Kevin Fall need to get more credit for their contribution to this area of research.

    Disclaimer: I am NOT Kevin Fall but I am a network researcher, specifically in the area of DTNs. No, not the algorithm.

    • What Cerf has done has create a bundle forwarding protocol stack for the Android. It's not as "out there" as you'd think- someone send you data, you carry it, then forward it later. Lots of questions/issues in between as you might imagine.

      That sounds exactly how "Fleetnet" works in the Axis of Time trilogy, once the 2021'ers get dumped in 1942 and no longer have access to satellite communications. When someone previously in Hawaii arrives in Los Angeles, carrying their flexipad (PDA/laptop-like device), it hooks up with other nearby devices and the owners of those devices receive the messages sent by other folks in Hawaii, not just those from the owner of the pad that made the trip.

  • by mounthood ( 993037 ) on Friday November 06, 2009 @12:49PM (#30007292)
    Vint Cerf on DTN:

    streaming is a little nuts but file transfers will work - delays will be long however.

    sensor nets are a natural. as is email

    short messaging ditto

    status reports from systems; some forms of control also ok.

    image transfer, no problem.

    v

    http://mailman.ccsds.org/pipermail/sis-dtn/2008-July/000038.html [ccsds.org]

  • Did it find out what was wrong with the hyperdrive?

  • Verizon apparently agrees that a data call on a cell phone isn't considered a continuous connection. I was with Alltel using #777 to get slow data calls for free. Since they became part of Verizon, I discover Verizon treats these data calls not only as consuming voice minutes, but also that they consider the connection as starting and stopping for any lull in traffic and round each one to the next minute. Over a period of 2 hours I'd used 130 minutes, and at a charge of 40 cents a minute due to having run o

  • Is there any source for the implementation? I looked around the DTN wiki, googled, and still couldn't find it. Am I blind, or is this still in the "let's brag about it but not share the code" stage?

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