this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2023
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Presumably there would be a cache on Mars of [email protected] so that anybody who wants to view it would not have to wait 10 minutes.. they would get the cached update - so they would immediately see the community as it was 10 minutes ago.
This cache would be continuously updating so to the user on Mars, there actually isn't that much disruption. Every time they check, there would be updates.
10 minutes or even 40 minutes is not that long in the grand scheme of things. We start talking about lightyears is when I think it starts to break down.
TCP/IP stacks are going to need pretty large buffers if a packet needs resending and takes 20 minutes round trip to get it.
Link layer protocols are going to need to implement some kind of redundancy and parity scheme that accounts for the enormous latency (Iโm sure NASA already has something like this)
Also the default 300 second HTTP timeout is going to need to be adjusted lol
The only issue might be when Mars and Earth are on opposite sides of Sol. Then the cache get's held for however many weeks it takes for a clear signal to go through.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Internet
there has been some thought about this. imagine a series of interplanetary satellites that act as nodes. so you don't need a clear signal from mars -> earth. you just need a clear signal to the next node, which would presumably be easier
obviously this is all sci-fi talk at this stage, but setting up internet on a mars colony is probably not gonna be the hardest part of colonization
It may not be the hardest part for sure, but could you imagine telling a kid they couldnt watch tiktok because they couldnt connect to the servers? People would never sign up for the mission.
I think that solar flares would be more of an issue as satellites get farther from earth. It'll take a lot more resources to replace a damaged satellite orbiting mars than it would for one orbiting earth.
But how would the cached copy be started to begin with? Take a server to earth and plug it in to the net? Rsync (if it will establish the connection to begin with)?
I think you're conflating two different questions here. These questions are really focused on a central question of "How would the internet work with latency measured in minutes, when most systems are configured around latency in milliseconds?" And the answer there is "We'd have to change how some systems work, and others wouldn't be feasible." Barring some method of FTL communication (which would be an instant Nobel prize in physics), you're never going to get real time instant messaging between Earth and Mars, but async methods of communication will work fine, albeit with more latency. But we're able to exchange digital data across planets now, it's just that the public internet is built around the assumption that the speed of light is only going to account for ~100ms of lag.
If you take an assumption that high latency digital communication will be feasible relatively soon after we have people living off planet (which is a reasonable assumption), networks like the fediverse will function with a lot of caching, as tikitaki mentioned. You'd never have perfect sync, but the biggest challenge would likely be how much bandwidth is required to keep different caches in sync.
To answer your specific question, you'd probably start an initial cache on planet, then keep it in sync during transit.
We'd need a networked connection between Earth and Mars. As far as what does the caching software-wise, it'd be done using Mars-based Lemmy instances