I am wondering the real numbers behind this discussion.
How many missions/space agencies there are in the works or in planning
that justifies the time spent with such discussion to have something
specific ? I imagine it is a pretty small number because of obvious
reasons: high cost, complexity, low number of space agencies and
projects running from time to time. What stops or what is so difficult
for space agencies, to simply ask for IP space for their respective RIR,
as it always have been, and use that IP space on whatever projects or
missions they justify for ? Why do we need to differentiate this usage
for such a supposed low amount of cases.
IP addressing to other planets ? Come on !
We barely have missions with few equipment on the Moon, Mars and few
other places.
The way it looks like, it seems in the next years there will be a mesh
network of point to point links between all planets of solar system.
Fernando
On 3/24/2026 7:21 PM, Tony Li wrote:
Hi Joe,
Considering appendix A of deepspace-ip-assessment, why
does this policy speak to IPv4 at all?
Because there are some other pragmatic issues that I think that we’ve touched
on before.
Today, space agencies are already using IPv4 addresses for all of the usual
legacy reasons. They have IPv4 infrastructure, and some of that may not be
easily upgradeable.
IPv4 also has a significant advantage in bandwidth overehead. Deep space links
are extremely low bandwidth. Voyager (admittedly not IP) gets about 160bps.
Mars rovers, when transmitting directly to Earth, get 500bps. The extra size
of IPv6 does make a significant difference at these rates.
Mission planners are going to be pragmatic, not dogmatic. For them, IP is a
tool and they will pick the best tool available to meet their mission goals.
While we might like them to pick IPv6, their decisions will be based on their
mission requirements, and bandwidth is always going to rank high in their
decision criteria.
We do not get to dictate to them. We have no authority over them. The best
that we can do is to advocate for our preferred solution. If they choose to use
IPv4, and we do not provide addressing infrastructure, then they will simply
use legacy prefixes and routing in space will be chaotic. That is a pragmatic
tactical outcome that will have deleterious strategic consequences, which we
should avoid.
On the other hand, if we provide addressing infrastructure for both IPv4 and
IPv6, we enable sane routing in both the short and long term, regardless of the
version selected.
When mission planners are thinking more strategically, working on missions that
lead to permanent installations, then the strategic benefits of IPv6 become
more apparent, especially in cases where there is higher bandwidth.
Mission planners are going to be the ones evaluating the tradeoffs and making
the decision. We should support them to provide the best pragmatic solution
available, regardless of what they choose.
Regards,
Tony
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