Delay Tolerant Networks – Building Interplanetary Internet – WS 08 2022

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22 June 2022 | 16:30 - 17:30 CEST | FabLab / Fibonacci | Video recording | Transcript
Consolidated programme 2022 overview / Day 2

Proposals: #78 #79

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Session teaser

Delay Tolerant Network - a building block of Interplanetary Internet and its implication in space and terrestrial deployments

Session description

Current expansion of space activities pushes the development of new communication technologies and standards, which allow for seamless communication in space. Here, The Delay Tolerant network architecture aims to merge and interconnect various underlying space and terrestrial communication technologies into the Inter-Planetary Internet. While this might give access to space infrastructure for new commercial and non-commercial stakeholders alike, it also challenges governance of terrestrial and space DTN infrastructure.

Format

After a short introduction, each of the three speakers will present their contribution for about 10'.

Q&A and discussion will follow, leaving 5' to wrap up.

Further reading

  • IPNSIG Strategy Working Group Report [1]
  • CCSDS Solar System Internet Architecture [2]
  • IOAG Lunar Communication Architecture [3]
  • IOAG Mars Communication Architecture [4]
  • Draft LunaNet Interoperability Specification [5]

People

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Focal Point

  • Samo Grasic

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  • Roberto Gaetano
  • Sivasubramanian Muthusamy
  • Samo Grasic
  • Vint Cerf
  • Felix Flentge
  • Maria Kristina Uden

Key Participants

  • Yosuke Kaneko will present "IPNSIG activity overview"
  • Felix Flentge will present "Towards the Implementation of Disruption Tolerant Networking at the European Space Agency”
  • Juan. A. Fraire will present "uD3TN: Motivations, Architecture and Experiments”

Moderator

  • Roberto Gaetano

Remote Moderator

Trained remote moderators will be assigned on the spot by the EuroDIG secretariat to each session.

Reporter

Reporters will be assigned by the EuroDIG secretariat in cooperation with the Geneva Internet Platform. The Reporter takes notes during the session and formulates 3 (max. 5) bullet points at the end of each session that:

  • are summarised on a slide and presented to the audience at the end of each session
  • relate to the particular session and to European Internet governance policy
  • are forward looking and propose goals and activities that can be initiated after EuroDIG (recommendations)
  • are in (rough) consensus with the audience

Current discussion, conference calls, schedules and minutes

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Messages

Video record

https://youtu.be/YmYLH3EcKB8?t=16481

Transcript

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This text, document, or file is based on live transcription. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART), captioning, and/or live transcription are provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. This text, document, or file is not to be distributed or used in any way that may violate copyright law.


>> SOPHIA: Hello. My name is Sophia and I’m the host here in the FabLab. Before we start with the session Delay Tolerant Networks, I would like my cohost to introduce herself and explain the session rules for today.

>> My name is Colette. I would like to go through some basic rules. Everyone online, if you could please mute yourself throughout the session and make sure you have your full name on display. And for everyone on site, if you wish to ask any questions, you can just raise your hand. For the ones online, please use the Zoom reaction to raise your hand. And we will make sure to let the Moderator know that there are people in Zoom that wish to participate. And then you can unmute yourself and take the floor. Thank you very much.

>> ROBERTO GAETANO: Thank you. My name is Roberto Gaetano. I will be the Moderator for this session. And let me start by introducing some organization who is the researcher at the University of Julia. And he is the focal point or the coordinator for this session. He has coordinated the preparation of this session. The floor is yours.

>> Thank you. So I would also like to thank you, everyone, for participating today, especially the key speakers today who are willing to make a presentation.

So we talked with Roberto, as we have quite a mixed audience today. It may be a good thing to start with to have a simple explanation of what Delay Tolerant Networks are. Later on I think the key speakers will explain more in details.

So the Delay Tolerant Networks arises from the attempt to standardize and as well deploy Internet in to the space. And during that process I think that started in the 1970s and then later on was taken on by Vint Cerf and the GPL lab. And the idea is to standardize the protocols in space in a similar way the Internet was on earth. When you deploy network in space you have a long propagation delay. When you send a signal it can take a couple of seconds to days or months for the signals to reach. You don’t have end-to-end connectivity. And for that reason the standard protocols used on the base Internet don’t work.

So the bundle, the DTN architecture encompasses various protocols and standards. And the key one is bundled protocol which can use different so-called convergence layers. It is going to adapt from bottom-up that you can connect over to TCP/IP. You can actually communicate among the different nodes in this network. And despite the fact that this technology was developed for the space, especially around 2000, it actually turned out that these protocols have actually quite a big application for that terrestrial use.

So I have personally been involved in a couple of projects where we tried to deploy DTN, would be used for communication in rural areas where you have bad connectivity. And actually carried the data with different – I mean in different kinds of ways with helicopters. If you have more questions, don’t hesitate to ask.

>> ROBERTO GAETANO: Thank you. A couple of words, this will be three presentations of more or less ten minutes each. And then we go to questions and answers. Depending on how many questions we have we will have maybe a second round for the three presenters for final comment.

So let me start with introducing the first presenter. With us is Yosuke Kaneko from the Japanese and a member of the Japanese space agency and Chairman of the interplanetary network special group who will be presenting an overview of the activity of IPNSIG, that’s the interplanetary network special interest group. Yosuke Kaneko, the floor is yours.

>> YOSUKE KANEKO: Okay. Thank you, Roberto. Can you hear me by the way?

>> ROBERTO GAETANO: Yes.

>> YOSUKE KANEKO: Okay. And I am just going to share my screen. Is it showing properly?

>> ROBERTO GAETANO: Yes.

>> YOSUKE KANEKO: Okay. Very good. So thank you again for the kind introduction. I’m Yosuke Kaneko. And it is my great honor today to present to you on some of the IPNSIG activity overview. So for the next ten minutes or so, I will be touching on some of the highlights here at the IPNSIG since your last EuroDIG held last year.

So truly it was an exciting moment for us, especially in the year 2021 and also in 2022 where we have launched new Working Groups and also a new programme which we call the IPNSIG academy. And there are several more updates to talk about. So let’s jump right in to it.

So at the IPNSIG, our goal is to expand networking to interplanetary space for the benefit of humanity. And along these lines the IPNSIG is working towards to create a common vision of IPN with the various stakeholders. And to offer a narrative and a roadmap to enable the development and evolution of the IPN. And, of course, to promote the use of the DTN technology. And the IPNSIG globe that you see here on the background really represents our goals and endeavors. I must tell you that Juan who is participating today designed this logo for us. And Juan has done a tremendous job in representing our revision in this beautiful logo. And we love it and use this everywhere.

So our aspiration is really to realize a solar system Internet, which could be something plausible in the 2100s. This is a notional picture that was crafted a little while ago, but it gives you kind of a sense of what a solar system Internet or SSI would look like.

The red hexagon lines in the middle of the picture is an illustration of a network backbone of the SSI relaying data across our solar system and serving for human and robotic missions. Although this is not the solar system Internet that we might be building, but what IPNSIG envisions is a common network backbone serving for all humanity as an infrastructure supporting the various activities.

And when we put our eyes around the globe today, what we are really seeing here is that the many private companies and nations are providing significant efforts in space communications, more industry, more nations are emerging and are bringing in their architecture concepts in to space. So there’s a significant amount of thrust that’s really, you know, pushing this horizon of space communications today. And this is truly amazing and I believe that.

We would like to see a network backbone in the earth and lunar and Mars domain. The human sphere may expand to the moon and on to Mars. And we would like to see the network backbone. And to do that it is important that we work together toward a coherent network architecture because we might think that the backbone could be comprised by many smaller Networks and a healthy governance model to support the operation of the architecture would also be necessary.

Along these lines the IPNSIG has set up a new Working Group called the architecture and governance to look at the existing concepts that we have today and assess what the ideal governance model might look like for the SSI. This is a one pager of the groups that we have. The AWG is listed on the bottom left corner. Felix who is participating today is on the AWG. And we are already having many discussions today. As you can see there are several other Working Groups working in different areas. The SWG is focusing on strategy and development. Pilot projects using DTN. And we have started a TWG which maintains a documentation library on our website where you can have access to many DTN and IPN related Articles and papers.

So the IPNSIG has broadened the scope of our activities by not just focusing on maturing the DTN or the bundle Protocols itself. We are trying to develop the evolution of the IPN. There are many projects underway at the IPNSIG. But one of the projects that the IPWG has started recently is called the global DTN test where we have distributed DTN news across the globe sending bundles to each other. So far we have set up those from the United States, Mexico and Argentina and Germany. And also where I sit here today in Tokyo. And a lot more to come. And if you would like to join to the test, and be a part of the test, please come and visit us on our website at the bottom of the page. And you can find more information about this.

And this here, we have launched a new programme called the IPNSIG Academy. As we have a long way to go to realize the 100 years vision. Our generations alone cannot achieve such goal of creating an interplanetary network. This effort needs to be continued and conveyed to our next and to our next, next generations since those future generations would eventually become the real engines of making this real. And that’s why we set up this academy. It is intended to become the venue to pave our way forward in realizing the IPN. As there are many multiple facets that needs to be considered in order to achieve this IPN, it is not about technology but we might also want to put our eyes on policies and governance issues.

So we started by inviting the most prestigious speakers around the world to provide talks. And at the very last session we will be setting up a workshop where we will be having some interactive discussions on architecture and governance with the academy participants. The first and second keynote are already completed. You can visit our website and check the recorded video and the materials are available there. Our next speaker would be Oscar Garcia. And the third line, and he will be on stage on July 13. So make sure you sign up for all these events.

And, of course, if you would like to become a member of the IPNSIG, please drop us a note to membership@IPNSIG.org and our Secretariat would be happy to address you.

And that brings us to our final page. Lastly the IPNSIG is honored to announce that we became the first space chapter at the Internet Society. We provided the name of the interplanetary chapter which has become a huge milestone for us. And I must also add that the IPNSIG has also become a formal U.S. non-profit organization this year. So it is literally a start of a new chapter for us. Please keep calling us. And thank you for your attention today. Back to you, Roberto.

>> ROBERTO GAETANO: Thank you for this excellent overview of the activities of the IPNSIG. I would like now to move to the second speaker that is Felix Flentge, sorry if I mispronounce your name, from the European Space Agency that will present towards the implementation of this adoption of tolerant networking at the European Space Agency. So the floor is yours.

>> FELIX FLENTGE: Thank you, Roberto. I hope you can see my screen. Can you confirm? Okay. That’s great. So (cutting out). Various activities we are doing in terms of the disruption tolerant networking today. My personal view about how we could introduce the Delay Tolerant Networking, for an interagency context and to incorporate other space working agencies. And then I would also raise some let’s say bigger questions which we have to sort along the way together to realize course and my 100 year vision in terms of the Internet.

So we are a European Space Agency. We have 32 Member States who have a say in what we do. We are somehow smaller than others. But still have a considerable budget of 6.68 billion. We are active in the domains related to space missions.

So just to give you a very brief overview of the different types of missions, so basically we have missions to all the destinations within the solar system. We have also missions around earth, various orbits and missions around system. And if you can see this overview here, it is clear these missions are quite diverse. We have some missions with very large delays in communications. Some with very small delays. We have missions in delayed communication. And we have missions with very high data rates and very low data rates. One solution to deal with these differences and to make the next step in the communications process, to move away from the current (cutting out).

We do relay in a very let’s say crude way by encapsulating data from one link to the next. So we see a lot of benefits in going towards this.

Having said this, up to now, we don’t have any ESA missions that apply to DTN. If you know space flight, you might know that space missions (cutting out) it takes a long time to prepare for the missions. Some missions have quite high costs. So far it is difficult to infuse technology in to that. What we do, we do preparatory activities. And because it is much easier to do ground implementations. We have implementations of the many protocol elements. In the past we did demonstration activities and simulated the ISS. Basically an astronaut operating a robot on the Mars surface. Feedback over DTN. We are setting up experiments and also one might talk about this – our – which is a cube set of operational experiments and together with our other colleagues and also the one that we are planning to have another demonstration. (Cutting out). Bundles at our ground station.

We are also quite active in study activities. High data rates for us. Ten gigabits per second. We are looking to security. We hope we start looking to onboard implementations. We are going to be very active in international bodies in terms of standardization, and standardization organization between space agencies described to us and also in IETF Advisory Groups between the space agencies. We are involved with – we have internal Working Groups and Working Groups with industry. We try to contribute as much as we can to the activities.

Looking to the application scenarios we see, I try four here. There might be others. We talk a little bit about the lunar communication navigation services. Mars Internetworking and optical communication and observations.

The one activity I’m very excited about in terms of disruption to our network is a net initiative. The idea is to play the communication infrastructure around the moon which enables realtime but also delayed communication services and navigation service on as a lunar surface and in lunar orbit. The idea is to have this provided by commercial companies but helping to setting up the concept using implementation. We have a kind of precursor mission to be launched in two or three years. It could be under study activities which developed a concept of these communication navigation services.

We have DTN set as one of the technologies to be used for interoperability and also looking in similar activities from other space agencies. Going to be able from the one – able to interoperate with other space agencies, which is something that we do almost daily, currently at Mars, for example, but other missions where we use ground stations from other space agencies or we provide ground stations for the relay satellite.

And I will not talk too much about the Mars missions. But to say on Mars we have similar plans. It is a little bit more in the future. We already have relays that help us do the relaying, it is – (cutting out). Really day-to-day, but it is still quite a complex planning process. Inefficiencies in the communication.

So looking at what we have today and how far we are actually ready to make the steps towards DTN I try to distinguish three different levels. I think what’s concerning essentially is interoperability, really transferring data. We are basically there today. So we have standards on physical layers. Standards for link layers. We have the bundled protocol. Time synchronization. Maybe we have to do a little bit more. But still it is something which is basically already there. So we could start DTN based missions basically.

The second point is what I call network level interoperability. So now if – we have moonlight, lunar net and other initiatives that are able to interpret the network level. We would have agreement with another to provide certain services to another. We would have to agree on some security policies. We have to agree how do we do the addressing. We have to agree how to do scheduling. (Cutting out). It probably could be extended for similar purposes. Training similar information. But it would not be kind of automatic, like you would expect from a network. It would be made more in exchange of information between operation entities like we have today.

But, of course, it would hope as these Networks flow and we have to scale up manual or do to exist between operation and (inaudible). This would be then the next step that we go to the network level interoperability, exchange network management information directly between nodes.

But this seems to be still a really far way to go. So here this is let’s say for the later phase, some of the questions and some of the topics which would – we have to discuss. And we will have to agree on one cross management of the sources. We have to assign some IPN node numbers and assignment of IP addresses today. There might be need for service, similar to physical UDP ports.

We have to distribute routing forward information in a secure way. We have to distribute it. We have to remember that we have delayed communication. We have constantly changing topologies of our network. Quite difficult problems. More commercial. We have to have rules and regulations but storage, monitoring and, et cetera, et cetera. Security itself is, of course, a big topic. And we start considering security right from the beginning.

We have the protocols which allow us to use this in a security way. What’s currently more difficult put security in to practice. We have 22 Member States of the security agencies, of these Member States get involved in – can get quite difficult. And we want to interpret this now. So it is quite currently – we did some experiments setting up Networks. But really more difficult than the protocols itself setting up the security procedures. And having secured connectivity.

So as you see a lot of questions. I would hope to get some input on to get some ideas about questions. I hope to be working this coming forward. (Off microphone).

So maybe just to summarize a bit, so we have various end-to- end application scenarios. Some involve Networks and some more mission specific use of DTN and justify to earth observation mission family or even a single satellite itself. We still see some advantages in these scenarios. They might be technology specific, doing a lot of work in terms of optical direct to earth communication. Let’s say less certain than the current RN communications.

So we see protocol there. We are looking very deeply now at – about multi-agency use in lunar context but for all these deployments we see across limited governance needs. So use some – operated by it on its own. Would be based on mutual agreement. What is important we have to see the road ahead. If we want to scale up. We should be sure what we are currently doing now will scale up to more open, more flexible, more inclusive Networks in the future. There is a question about how to start governance now, how should we start. What is to do that. But how – also how can this involve the next 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years.

Another thing which is quite important now, we have basically forced our missions we have to provide standards now. Everything has to be decided. At the same time we need to maintain a lot of openness. We need to maintain a lot of flexibility that we can build future innovation, future improvements within the architecture of Governance.

I think that’s all for me now. I think we continue with the next presentation and then we take questions.

>> ROBERTO GAETANO: Yes. Thank you for your presentation. And in fact, we are going to move to the third presentation. The third speaker is Juan Fraire who is an academic researcher. And about to present UD3TN, which I honestly confess I have no clue what that is. And motivation architecture and experiments. I’m sure that Juan will explain me what is UD3TN. Thank you. You have the floor.

>> JUAN FRAIRE: Thank you for the introduction. And, of course, I hope I can clarify what this is. And I hope this can be welcomed by the participants. So give me one second. I will share my screen here. All right.

We are sharing. Can you see my screen now?

>> Yes.

>> ROBERTO GAETANO: Yes.

>> JUAN FRAIRE: Thank you. I will try to clarify what UD3TN and why I think it is relevant for the conversations we are having today after Yosuke Kaneko and Felix Flentge talked. UD3TN is a product from D3TN. It is a small company located in Dresden, Germany and a subsidiary in Miami in the U.S. We are specialized challenging environments. We have problems of very high error rate. We have problems of very high latency between nodes in the network. We have problems of disruptions on the connections and highly dynamic environments where links between nodes in a network. It appears and disappears. This is our focus of study. And, of course, space networking is one of the these cases.

So we basically specialize in Delay Tolerant Network protocols and applications running on top of these protocols. At the company we have a bunch of software elements that we provide as a solution. We have a bunch of tools for simulating and emulating and modeling Delay Tolerant Networks so we can understand what’s an expensive performance in a given scenario so we can understand and provide useful process to coordinate and manage these types of Networks. We also host our own bundled protocol determination.

And implementation is called micro D3TN. This is where this weird word comes from. The little micro has to do with the fact this is a very lightweight DTN protocol stack we are covering. I’m going to cover this in more detail.

Thanks to the knowledge that we have based on the tools and based on the protocols that we have developed we are also – there is more like a recent training at the company where we are also developing applications that are trying to use the Delay Tolerant Networking stacks so we can create useful applications for different purposes, which is quite a challenge.

Because you have high delay, high latency and therefore having timely synchronizing message between different nodes can be quite challenging. We have an idea to tackle this problem. A bunch of applications can be created on top of this in the future. This is something that we are offering at the moment. For those who have knowledge on databases will understand that Mongoose is one of the popular databases around.

So we – I’m going to present today a bunch of projects where we are trying to push forward the development of DTN. I want to touch on coldsun and OPS-SAT projects, some projects funded by the German Government and also the lunar icecube project. And the core idea of D3TN we want to construct the interplanetary Internet, but we want to build on top of use cases and business cases.

So we believe that we fully support IPNC’s vision of the interplanetary Internet. We are trying to answer the question of how we get there. The proposal from D3TN to get there we need to detect and provide solutions on terrestrial environments or near earth environment that can help us to develop the technology that can in the future connect the solar system Internet in the following years. So this is our vision at D3TN. And this vision materializes in to micro D3TN as I mentioned before.

So micro D3TN is an open source stack. So you can access this in our GitLab repositories and you can have some augmentations around there to facilitate utilization of the tool. The micro objectives come from the fact that this is a very lightweight protocol stack. DTN have other protocol stacks. And also from other – also some implementations from ESA. But what we found with D3TN these implementations are so feature full sometimes it becomes quite challenging not only to maintain and develop but to run in a constraint processing environment.

So this is why micro D3TN comes to play the role of the DTN protocol implementation that can, for instance, open the way to think on Internet of Things, DTN solutions where you run bundled protocol solutions in very, very small devices, even micro controllers as we mentioned here. Interesting micro D3TN was the first DTN protocol to flight test.

I am going to talk in a few seconds about this experiment. And this is just basically an overview of the micro D3TN architecture. This is a common feature for every DTN presentation. We have conversion layers as the southbound interface where you will connect different protocols of the specific networking environment that you are connecting. So if you are using Internet, then you will just plot TCP over here. And then on the top we have a very flexible application agent protocol or AAP where we can connect to the DTN instance by means of socket interfaces. For those are a little bit familiar with networking you can easily develop your application on top of micro D3TN. And the application will take care of transforming your data flow in to a delayed tolerant data transfer. This is a quick highlight.

And now I’m going to briefly touch on some projects where we have implemented and those projects help us to get some insight of how the protocols work and develop it further and include new features. One of the first projects that we use to test and evaluate micro D3TN was coldsun. It was a project that was funded by ESA. It was a business application project. In this case what we developed was a void that was floating on a lake or ocean that implements micro D3TN on a small computer onboard. And a network of underwater sensor nodes was deployed. These Networks were able to connect to each other also using DTN as a protocol.

What happened in the underwater network is quite similar to the challenges that arises in interplanetary networking because of latency of mechanical signals and is also significantly slower than what we are used to seeing on tradition wired or wireless environments where signals travel close to the speed of flight. We have similar problems in the interplanetary networking. And we use underwater systems to study how these protocols worked in such environments. On top of that in the coldsun project we relayed data via a ground to satellite link. We use a commercial service available with satellite networks to also send the bundles, which are the data units from the bundled protocol to a standard commercial satellite communications providers. And basically forward and also return the data to and from our ground segment network where we were hosting another micro D3TN instance there.

So this is one of the very concrete use cases that we found for DTN here on the ground that is helping us to develop the protocols that can in the future connect the solar system network. This was the first bundled Protocol 7 implementation that basically sent bundles to and from outer space satellites.

These are pictures we have of dropping the sensors underwater and connecting them by means of mechanical waves on the water. We have some cables to keep track of telemetry and so on. So this happened on a lake in Dresden, Germany in 2019. In 2020 we were able to run some experiments on OPS-SAT. And we were able to deploy micro D3TN itself. We were participating in a space segment. What we tested is the ring road network or RRN is the main motivation use case for D3TN. So use low orbit satellite and collect data from remote and isolated Networks and collect undelivered data to and from remote and isolated Networks but in a delayed tolerant fashion.

You have a continuous connectivity end to end, but instead we think that maybe just a reduced number of satellite fleets can just go back and forth in a delayed tolerant fashion and getting memory in to for a prolonged time period. And then already enabled a bunch of applications in a cost efficient manner and without all these problems we are seeing.

So back to the experiments, we were able to test access to a remote webserver from what’s called a cold spot. This is a node that’s completely isolated but only to the passing of low earth satellite. It takes care of carrying data and delivering to what is called a hot spot which is a node that’s connected to the Internet. And that node on behalf of the cold spot was able to access a webserver. We demonstrated in a real legal satellite that data could flow and protocol and therefore DTN architecture in the end to carry to and from.

A second experiment, what happened in May 2021 involved this a little bit further and instead of just access in a simple webserver, we just deployed what is Google cloud application where a machine learning instance was able to classify an image that was uploaded again by this cold spot over here to the satellite. The satellite forwarded data to the machine learning application on the cloud. And then classification was in turn returned to the cold spot operating in a remote area. So you can imagine that the plenty of use cases can be achieved by this.

So if we are, for instance, just some robot taking pictures in the North, you can by means of DTN provide machine learning solutions to classify what the robot is looking at and in a cost efficient manner because cube satellite is far more cheaper. So again this was a second experiment that we executed with – in cooperation with ESA as well.

And while we are working out, at the moment is a more ambitious experiment where we want to use the OPS satellite again but to control a drone that’s connected by DTN. Remote controlling something can break some structures because controlling you have always a look where you care a lot about the delay. So you need to think about how the control happens. And this is what we are doing now. You can imagine that our use case for this is controlling the drone in a remote planet. So the challenges are the same.

We’ve all seen NASA helicopters. We are trying to replicate such an experience. But you see in later networks as well over high latency to control a drone. It can have interesting use cases by controlling drones via satellites which drones can be, of course, be operating in remote areas with sporadic access to connectivity of a cube satellite the one that we are seeing here.

I’m just leaving just reference over here of a recent magazine paper that was published describing this experiments in detail. So I refer you to the paper titled Ring Road Networks: Access For Everyone.

To conclude my presentation, as Felix mentioned before it is not only a matter of pushing forward the technology itself, but also the features of interoperability that DTN bring to different agencies. And together with ESA and NASA we collaborate with the lunar icecube satellite. And this satellite will be forwarding bundle packets from the lunar orbit to ground. We are testing what could be a complicated ground architecture where ESA and NASA and D3TN participate. And thanks to the bundled protocol format and process we are able to connect all these different actors in a transparent way. And also on top of that we are able to make this data available to possible data scientists in a very data transparent way. Otherwise very complicated ground segment configurations for future missions.

So this was in a nutshell what we are doing. Our vision, what we are trying to push forward. As I mentioned before the vision is we have the vision that the ring road networks concept can make it to Mars and make it to other planets as well.

To close my talk our vision is to detect concrete use cases on the ground to develop the technology that will in the future be connecting the solar system Internet. So thank you for the opportunity. And happy to take questions afterwards.

>> ROBERTO GAETANO: Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. I realize at least one thing that the first character was not a lower case u but was a micro sign. That’s good progress for me. Yeah.

Let’s start with the questions. There is one implicit question that is whether the presentations are available. Normally at EuroDIG the presentations are available for downloading. But that needs the agreement of the authors.

So this would be sorted administratively. Any questions from the floor from here or from the – yes. Please go ahead.

>> Thank you. This is Aron from DiploFoundation. Great presentations. I wanted to ask if you envisage this as a future Internet in 100+ years and private companies are pushing the boundary to space. Are all of these standards and everything else, is it built on an open source? Preparatory or what does this envisage for the future? Thank you.

>> ROBERTO GAETANO: Who wants to answer this question?

>> JUAN FRAIRE: I can take the answer on my side, from what I said from D3TN point of view. As I mentioned before our UD3TN is open source. So the reason for that is that we don’t have huge business cases at the moment that merits the proprietary development of software. So we are on the contrary like betting that open sourcing the code will help a lot of students, which is actually what we are experiencing so far to play with the software stack, to make some enhancements. To study, to develop it further. And, of course, this will possibly, you know, boost the development of the DTN in the future from our perspective.

And then the challenge from the business model perspective, how does the company make money because this is what the company is for. And the way of approaching that part is providing like high quality services of support or custom development efforts. And because in the end what happens, we are looking at the underwater industry which is quite big because of offshore wind parks. And those companies, they don’t want to get the open source code and just run compiling themselves and running their nodes. They want someone to know how the code works, how they operate the real network. And I think that’s where the company value might come from.

And this is what we are trying to do at the moment. We are not saying we are hugely, greatly successful. And then put our say venue stream to supporting the system to the Delay Tolerant Networking.

>> Thank you.

>> FELIX FLENTGE: From the standardization perspective, the way it currently works we have funded protocol and funded protocol security extensions and also convergence for bundled protocols. There is a DTN Working Group. For the space group we have this group called Consultative Space Missions, which adopts the bundled protocol. But also has basically complete standards for the communication, space for space communication. And these standards are publically available. We have seen some cases that for newer things, optical communications sometimes can provide solutions for certain aspects and certain protocols. And this is something that we take up to try to come up with an open standard for the specific problems of communication. So everything which we have from today is available under an open standard. I mean maybe for the hundred year vision it is more to Yosuke Kaneko to answer that one.

>> YOSUKE KANEKO: Yes, I just want to add to that, basically first and foremost we must have a global standard. That’s actually the very first step in realizing a common infrastructure. And if you look at the Internet, it became so successful because we had a single source of doing things, right? Like the TCP/IP and PCP. We must learn from that and follow the same path in the SSR regime as well. IPNSIG is a big supporter on global standards.

>> ROBERTO GAETANO: Thank you. I personally have a question that is trivial but is last considerations and comparison with the normal Internet.

I see both in the presentation of Yosuke Kaneko and Felix, you mention directly, indirectly Internet Governance issues. Explicitly in the IPNSIG, but also in the ESA presentation, there is this need to come to international agreements in order to do further development.

So the question is this one, considering also that this conference is about Internet Governance, in the traditional Internet, we had first development. And then we figured out later on that we needed a governance structure that came a bit late, that was when the Internet become commercially important. And so there were a lot of conflicting interests. What are the issues that you see in – for the interplanetary network or general speaking for the Delay Tolerant Networks that need an Internet – that need a governance model, that need to have this sort of agreement? And are we secondary – secondary question, are we going to this path so – are we proactively thinking about governance models so we don’t close the door of the van when the cows are gone?

>> YOSUKE KANEKO: Let me start. That’s why we are discussing about governance and architecture because, you know, things are starting to emerge already. We are seeing a lot of concept emerging in space communications. And before we get – go to a state where it is backward, not backward compatible, we must think over what the healthy governance might be. Internet started by developing and then we start talking about governance but we learn from that. And when we talk about SSI we want to think about by understanding the lessons learned from the Internet, and how we can make advancements to the SSI regime.

So that’s the, you know, fundamental thinking of why we are tackling this governance issue.

And a couple of things that we have observed at our Working Group already, I hope I can give you a comprehensive answer, but we are still having a lot of discussions on governance. And I think one of the things that we have been discussing is that we should employ a decentralized approach, which is kind of a distributing the control as much as possible because that was how the Internet became so successful.

And the second point is we want to keep what we want to govern at a minimum level. We don’t want to govern everything. We want to keep what is required. And I think that is the key to success. For minimum governance is another key aspect.

And a third piece would be the multi-stakeholder approach that we employ in the Internet regime. And I think that works very well. So I think we should take well consideration in to the SSI regime as well. For me right now I can point out three of those points that we can reflect upon ourselves when we talk about governance in the SSI. Over.

>> ROBERTO GAETANO: Thank you. Anybody else wants to talk about this governance aspect? If not –

>> FELIX FLENTGE: I can maybe add a bit on that. Yes. It is very important what Yosuke said. We need to think ahead of what we need in 10 years, 20 years. At the same time we have to consider that there are certain governance aspects in place. So we have ITU for (inaudible) and so on.

You have standardization bodies. We have processes in the standardization bodies. We have a number of registries. We have interagency groups. We have to see how we can open up this. I think maybe one of the questions how do we make use of the resources that we have already. How can we involve more things, especially now this is approved towards a standardization on space missions. And a very important step that we try to find out how to really open up, how to engage more in this industry. Used to be dominated by space agencies.

>> ROBERTO GAETANO: Thank you. And I think we have time for a last question by Samo.

>> I have a question as all the key speakers are coming and they worked previously with a space agency. Is there any way to strengthen the collaboration between the more terrestrial deployments and space deployments? There are many islands of the DTN that we are trying and testing especially in terrestrial and we still haven’t connected with any – I’m not aware of any of the space deployments. So I’m wondering if it would be possible for various space agencies to develop a sand box. That could be a good starting point when it comes to governance. We discuss how to hand out the numbers and manage an entire system. We would want to kind of – we will probably have different ways of managing these Networks. And I think it would be really beneficial for all of us to kind of start to work on this right now.

>> YOSUKE KANEKO: I can tell you where I work and normally is a programme called the Innovative Satellite programme where we invite challenging technologies or innovative technologies to be demonstrated on our hosted payload. So those are one of the opportunities that the Japanese agency can support. I don’t know about ESA. Maybe Felix can elaborate a little bit.

>> FELIX FLENTGE: I’m focused on the space network side. I’m interested to learn from this because we probably have similar issues that we have to solve. Which issue that is critical. Liability, accountability, things like that. So I think this is an area we should see how to come together.

In general terms also ESA is trying to use or reuse things in space, technology, interterrestrial applications. As you are running some of these projects it is much more (inaudible).

>> ROBERTO GAETANO: Thank you. I think that we have finished our time. And we need to leave the floor to the next session.

And I would like to thank all the speakers and the participants for a great session.

(Applause.)

>> ROBERTO GAETANO: And I think I leave the floor to the next session.

>> Thank you for this interesting session. We are moving on to the next session which is agreeing on the messages of Focus Area 3. And I see that Marco Lotti is already present in the chat. And we will have to wait a few more minutes for the Moderator to arrive. But that will happen. I will keep you updated. For the meantime we will just wait for a few minutes. Thank you.

>> YOSUKE KANEKO: Thank you for having us. Bye.

>> JUAN FRAIRE: Bye. Thank you.

>> FELIX FLENTGE: Bye.