Interplanetary Internet Plans Are Unearthed

Welcome Guest. | Log In| Register | Membership Benefits

July 22, 1998 (9:21 AM EDT)

By Andrew Craig,

GENEVA -- Plans to create an interplanetary Internet, extending the reach of the Internet across the solar system, are under way in the United States, according to "father of the Internet" Vint Cerf.

Discussions are under way between the Internet Society and American space agency NASA about taking Internet equipment into space, said Cerf, MCI senior vice president and Internet Society chairman, during a keynote speech at the Internet Society's eighth annual conference INet '98 , here in Geneva.

The Internet Society, a group that promotes the Internet, is in discussions with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory about taking Internet equipment on the next mission to Mars, said Cerf, a co-inventor of the widely used TCP/IP Internet protocol.

Internetworking equipment would likely be taken to Mars by NASA, and some equipment for creating an interplanetary Internet gateway would be left in orbit after the mission for use in future projects, Cerf said.

INet '98 runs until Friday and will be followed by the European leg of a public debate on the sensitive subject of how Internet domain names should be managed. The meeting, which follows a similar event in the United States earlier this month, will discuss the domain-name proposals put forward by the U.S. government in its revised domain-name plan, released in June.

Cerf joked with Internet guru Jon Postel, also in attendance, about the problems of assigning interplanetary domain names. "Perhaps we will have to register .earth and .mars," he said.

But the plans are serious, Cerf said. "Let me assure you this is quite real," he said. Further announcements are expected on Aug. 3 and 4, he added.

Of the list of problems associated with interplanetary Internetworking, finding a suitable transport protocol will be one of the most challenging, said Cerf.

"It is a six-hour transfer to Pluto, and that does not make TCP/IP an attractive option," he said.