UUCP still works quite nicely.
Covers all their actual needs (not necessarily stated needs), and more ... runs on minimal equipment, can use Earth-bound networking schemes for transport as required, etc. etc.
Sorted. No charge.
The Internet Society’s Interplanetary Networking Special Interest Group (IPNSIG) has called for the development of “a common, interoperable, autonomous and scalable routing framework within the Solar System Internet.” The SIG’s call was revealed in its September newsletter , which detailed a late meeting of the body’s …
The thing is space is BIG, and to get any decent radio or optical link you need to focus it really tightly. And that means to sender/recipient generally has to have directive antennas pointing at each other. So it is not just down to how you bounce data around, you also need mechanisms to make sure various nodes can align themselves for comms when needed, and hours later when a reply might be due.
So they all need to be passing physical coordinates / propagation vectors as well so they have some sort of knowledge of this.
I'm not sure that's true. That's one way to solve it, another might be having a list of predefined 'targets' that the nodes are either aligned with, or can align with, with timings. So node 1 knows it can talk to node 3000 for 14 seconds in 2 minutes, and afterwards it can talk to node 5 for 8 minutes.
You can update those rules as you add nodes, but means you don't need to include telemetry in every payload.
I suppose that's the idea with the spray and wait mentioned in the article, as you just pass the message on until you get a 'shut up' command. Doing so would mean not spending energy adjusting antenna, although you still waste it repeating your broadcasts so not sure what that would do to bandwidth!
Yup. OSI (Open Space Initiative) protocols work better.
I was briefly involved with some Interplanetary Internet stuff years ago, which mainly seemed an excuse to get Ciscos in Spaaaaace. Best part was chatting with some actual NASA engineers about the protocols already in use. Oddly enough, they were already rather effective and efficient, and so I wondered why we'd want to burden them with IP.
Now we have 'Spray and Pray', and still don't seem to think that having a telecomms-style destination octet. 1.x.x.x.x(:x)= Earth, 10.x.x.. = Moon etc. But then most of the Internet's routing problems could've been improved by copying the way telecomms did numbering well over a century ago.
You might be joking, but in reality:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AX.25
It is an awful choice for data encoding, as bit errors cause a shift in frame position making error correction a practical nightmare. There are good reasons to use the CCSDS standards, but sadly for many cubsats they still go back to AX25.
The gimp, as that is the best thing to do with X25 and derivatives =>
SCPS, but it doesn't seem to have received much love lately.
The TCP proxy SCPS-TP is widely used for geosynchronous satellite comms. It is probably insufficient for Mars or Pluto. Or Sedna.
Perhaps the UDP-based QUIC would do?
"No, it's not a backhoe, it's a black hole"...
Prior art: maybe half of George O. Smith's "Venus Equilateral Relay Station" science fiction stories of 1942-1945, ahem!
"Venus Equilateral was formed out of a nickel-iron asteroid that was moved into Venus' L4 point (following it in orbit). A a space station three miles long and one mile in diameter, it serves as a communications relay between Venus, Earth, and Mars whenever interference from the Sun prevents line-of-sight communication between them."
But possibly we would manage with something smaller in size and population.
Stories include technology problems, business problems, space pirates, and fun with matter replicators, and "Lost Art" which is about wireless power and set on Mars.