Lecture: ION Implementation of the Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking Architecture (2.6)
Communicating from Earth to any spacecraft is a complex challenge, largely due to the extreme distances involved. When data are transmitted and received across thousands and even millions of miles, the delay and potential for disruption or data loss is significant. Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) is NASA’s solution to reliable internetworking for space missions. One software option to implement DTN is NASA’s Interplanetary Overlay Network (ION).
The features of ION are enabled by a small number of core mechanisms, including private dynamic memory management, reversible transactions and zero-copy objects. In this video, those mechanisms are examined and then discussed with the ION operations concept that rests on them.