Space and Internet Converging: Into the Low Earth Orbit Satellites Era
Stikine Room (Room 260) of Irving K. Barber Learning Centre
Abstract
The last few years have seen the emergence of a handful of paradigms, with the potential to impact the Internet infrastructure and the design and deployment of Internet-based services. These paradigms will have significant consequences for content delivery models, cloud networks, distributed computing and the economics of over-the-top application rollouts. These include aspects such as blockchain and decentralized Internet technologies, quantum communications and low earth orbit (LEO) satellite communication networks. Following a brief review of the latest trends affecting the evolution of the Internet infrastructure, our talk will focus specifically on LEO satellite networks, and mostly addresses the challenges to overcome to ensure their potential success. It provides a glimpse of how the technologies, protocols, standards and mechanisms in use for the rollout of LEO-based communication networks over the next few years. There is an opportunity to leverage state-of-the-art Internet designs and evolving those optimally to enable the deployment of this new generation of space networks. We present a non-exhaustive review of some of the key aspects that need to be addressed, both in the service offerings and the technology development fronts. For each one of the dimensions considered, we list some of the aspects that require further work, and that could take advantage of the available Internet mechanisms and standards, for the specific context of LEO networks.
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