Vinton Cerf Proposes Interplanetary Internet

“They say a year in the Internet business is like a dog year… equivalent to seven years in a regular person's life. In other words, it's evolving fast and faster.” Vinton Cerf - Internet - Business - Innovation

The Internet is now ready to explore new frontiers in outer space, Vinton Cerf, one of its co-creators predicted last week during a news conference (Agence France-Presse). According to Cerf, the “Internet service would give people an ability to access information and to control experiments far away”, from earth.

In September 8, 2005 – Google announced that it hired Vinton Cerf, a longtime technologist who is widely known as a "founding father" of the Internet, as its Chief Internet Evangelist. "Vint Cerf is clearly one of the great technology leaders of our time," said Google CEO Eric Schmidt of Cerf, who co-designed the TCP/IP protocols that were used to develop the Internet's underlying architecture. "His vision for technology helped create entire industries that have transformed many parts of our lives…”

About Vinton Cerf

Vinton Gray Cerf (born June 23, 1943) is an American computer scientist who is commonly referred to as one of the "founding fathers of the Internet" for his key technical and managerial role, together with Bob Kahn, in the creation of the Internet and the TCP/IP protocols which it uses. He was also a co-founder (in 1992) of the Internet Society (ISOC) which is intended to both promote the views of ordinary users of the Internet, and also serve as an umbrella body for the technical groups developing the Internet (such as the Internet Engineering Task Force). He served as the first president of the Internet Society from 1992-1995, served on the board of trustees through the end of 2001, and served as chairman of the board from 1998 to 1999.

He has a hearing impairment, and serves on the board of Gallaudet University, the first school of higher learning for the deaf and hard-of-hearing; he received an award from the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. He and his family currently reside in Virginia.

Interplanetary Internet

According to Marc Boucher at Spaceref.com, "The idea of an InterPlanetary Internet came to Vinton Cerf several years ago as he was trying to formulate an idea of what the Internet might look like in the future."

Marc goes on to say that, “He (Cerf) envisioned a series of Internets linked by gateways and using the Internet Protocol (IP) suite (a world-wide standard) as its basis. By using the IP protocol (which he helped co-create), he felt that existing technology could be leveraged so as to speed up development of the InterPlanetary Internet.”

Cerf told a separate news conference (SEOUL (AFP)) on October 17, 2007, that new standards were needed because of the huge distances and time delays involved in communication across space and that experts were already working on them to guide the forth-coming space-era internet communications. "The Internet can take us where no network has gone before", he noted.

"This effort", according to Cerf, "is now bearing fruit and is on track to be space qualified and standardized in the 2010 time frame. Eventually we will accumulate an interplanetary backbone to assist robotic and manned missions with robust communication."

Apparently, the immediate priority would be to ease the communications needed between Earth and Mars. A new study already underway at NASA titled the Mars Network is already looking at just such an option.

The Mars Network would apparently consist of an assemblage of micro satellites and one or more (larger) Mars Areostationary Relay Satellites. The Mars network would be for support of the Mars missions to return samples as well as surface and orbital activates. Apparently, with such an infrastructure in place around Mars individual spacecraft on Mars would not require as much communications capabilities as presently needed.

As Spaceref's Marc Boucher pointed out, “The potential applications of a InterPlanetary Internet extend well beyond the management of space missions. People who surf the Internet today and tap websites in extreme locations such as Antarctica may some day be able to communicate to web or ftp servers on Martian micro satellites… and that's just the beginning.”

According to Cerf, "One of the outstanding changes was the internet's huge growth in Asia, which now boasts 436 million users, well above the figures of 321 million in Europe and 233 million in North America, the birthplace of the web. That there are so many users in Asia suggests the content of the internet will eventually contain far more information in languages other than English than it does today," he added.

"Technological changes were occurring to keep pace with the expansion, with one of the key challenges being a shortage of internet addresses. The internet currently allows a total of only 4.3 billion unique addresses - plenty back in the 1970s but not enough now", said Cerf, who is also chairman of the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Where will it end?

Cerf said he expects, "billions of Internet-enabled devices" to emerge, with items to cover nearly all home appliances such as televisions, radios, kitchen equipment, fax machines and printers, refrigerators and bathroom scales.

Conclusion

While I am not enamored with the concept of Internet Technology in space, I do find the idea intriguing. Personally, I feel that the vast amounts of money needed for such a project would better be used for more earth bound ventures.  Humanitarian aide is one that comes foremost to my mind along with cures for cancer and diabetes and other presently incurable diseases.

On a more humorous side as I reflect on Cerf’s comments about Internet enabled devices I envision an Internet ready commode.

Imagine if you are sitting and contemplating the theory of relativity or more commonly reading your favorite magazine as you perform your daily duties.  Now imagine that instead you reach for and pull out an extendable keyboard hidden in a vanity cavity for just such an occasion.  On the wall, a mirror turns into a monitor allowing you to surf the internet while performing your daily constitution.  Now that would be a techie’s dream come true.

Sorry Cerf, while I do appreciate your earlier contributions (the internet) I have to give you two thumbs down on this new process of thought. It holds no earth bound value.