What strikes me is not the bandwidth achieved but the precision of the technology to aim the laser. 19 million miles is a great distance to successfully aim a beam of light. As this technology develops, real time communications with objects in orbit like around Mars will be possible.
I’m wondering if we will need to tweak our Internet protocols to include interplanetary time? I would imagine mirroring would be much more important. Because light can only go so fast.
What strikes me is not the bandwidth achieved but the precision of the technology to aim the laser. 19 million miles is a great distance to successfully aim a beam of light. As this technology develops, real time communications with objects in orbit like around Mars will be possible.
Well realtime is just not true. But cool technology nonetheless.
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It’s really not at these scales. Earth and Mars go from roughly 4 light minutes apart to over 20.
At the best case, saying something and then waiting 8 minutes for a response is hardly what I’d call “real time”.
It’s the fastest speed information can go through space, as far as we know. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of space. And a mean a LOT.
I’m wondering if we will need to tweak our Internet protocols to include interplanetary time? I would imagine mirroring would be much more important. Because light can only go so fast.
Yes, the high latency and intermittent connectivity is a big challenge. Delay tolerant networking (DTN) is one good way of solving this problem.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System
I think the issue, again will be date and time.
DDMMYYYY + Planet + Orbit?
UTC and forget
I’m sure several OSI layers have already been modified by NASA to suit their needs. But, the protocols will pretty much remain standard.
I presume that we’re not yet concerned with what the Ansible tech awoke in the vast emptiness between, hmm?