Millions of miles above us, a new networking technology is taking shape that could one day help improve how applications are networked on Earth.
NASA is testing a network layer technology that can withstand the rigorous demands of space communication better than the standard TCP/IP protocol, which dominates terrestrial (non-space) networking technologies.
Officially called Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN), the technology went through testing earlier this month with a space probe that is currently more than 20 million miles from Earth.
DTN uses a different kind of approach than TCP/IP for packet delivery that is less cumbersome and more resilient to disruption than TCP/IP.
"In fact, far more research has been done to date on the application of DTN to terrestrial communication problems than on its use in space flight missions," said Scott Burleigh, a senior engineer for the Deep Impact Networking Experiment of NASA's JPL (Jet Propulsion Lab). "DTN has potential benefits in providing connectivity to parts of the world that are under-served by existing network infrastructure, in supporting oceanographic research, in tactical military communications, and more," he told InternetNews. com. "It's a pretty active field."
The basic idea behind DTN network endpoints aren't always continuously connected. In order to facilitate data transfer, DTN uses a store-and-forward approach across routers that is more disruption-tolerant than TCP/IP. However, the DTN approach doesn't necessarily mean that all DTN routers on a network would require large storage capacity in order to maintain end-to-end data integrity.
"It's always possible to have a DTN router that happens to be in constant communication with all of its neighbors over links on which round-trip times are very short, in which case very little storage would be needed," Burleigh explained. "All the bundles it received would immediately be forwarded, much as in an Internet router."
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