Space Station Pilots ‘Interplanetary Internet’

A new networking technology called Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) could give astronauts direct Internet access within a year. The technology currently is being tested aboard the International Space Station (ISS), and could lead towards what has been dubbed the Interplanetary Internet. DTN communications protocol is a like TCP/IP, which defines how information is encoded and routed through a network. However, while TCP/IP deals with a continuous end-to-end network of Internet hosts and computers, DTN deals with spacecraft whose communications may be disrupted as they travel. DTN deals with disruptions by storing unsent data packets in a queue until conditions allow for them to be transmitted