Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us> wrote:
>Whenever I read something like this, I ask myself "What problem are
>they trying to solve"? The US military wants to fly a smart router to
>reduce traffic between ground stations, possibly even eliminating the
>number of ground stations required. That's an admirable goal that can
>more economically be achieved by doing most of the routing on the
>ground or working on protocol efficiency, but those projects don't get
>headlines.

However, satellite bandwidth is expensive, and this would
increase efficiency by nearly two times. Plus provide better
service (lower latency, which is significant for both voice and
video conferencing).

>It's basically a good idea if there are multiple connections to the
>satellite communications system.

For example... multi-unit combat teams.

>For the home satellite internet
>users, that would mean that pinging another user would go directly
>between users via the router in the sky. That reduces latency and
>enables peer-to-peer applications such as VoIP and global illegal file
>sharing.

Okay, you would benefit! That's good Jeff. But global legal
file sharing would be improved to, so I would benefit also,
which *is* important... ;-)

>The problem is that the ISP never sees the peer-to-peer
>traffic as it never goes down to the ISP's ground stations. That
>means that the ISP can't easily do filtering, traffic management,
>sniffing, and abuse mitigation.

Why not? It's all done in the router. Granted that it will be
more expensive because power on board a satellite is limited,
but I suspect they've got this down to some fairly low power
technology by now.

>The router in the sky can send
>reports down to the ground, and of course ACL lists can be used, but I
>doubt if this particular router will have the horsepower to do this
>for the entire continent. Maybe the next generation probably called
>"ISP in the Sky".

Well, there are problems. One is that NSA will have to buy a
whole transponder on each satellite just to handle the snooping.
Congress can fund that though... (now they steal bandwidth on
virtually every satellite, but they don't need to access the
internals).

>>Although some work has been carried out on the necessary standards and
>>protocols, no definite schedule has been announced for this
>>interplanetary internet.
>
>Yep. More research, justification, politics, bribes, deals, awards,
>litigation, consortia, licensing, auctions, press releases and
>technology are necessary.

Yeah, that's *wrong* (because *my* friends aren't getting enough).

--
Floyd L. Davidson <http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) floyd@apaflo.com