a) It’s a real word
b) They didn’t have to torture a thesaurus to make the words fit
c) It stands for something really cool
The US Department of Defense’s Internet Routing In Space project has placed an internet router in orbit around the Earth, as part of a plan to ensure the web will never be out of reach. For them, at least.
The spaceborne Cisco system provides a wonderful symmetry to the development of the internet. The web’s grandfather, ARPAnet, was built by the Advanced Research Projects Agency, who were in turn created because of the Soviet satellite Sputnik - now the result of their work is launching itself into space as if to follow its inspiration.
The Cisco Space Router, and it’s actually called that, is installed onboard the Intelstat IS-14 satellite. While communications satellites are the exact opposite of new, this space-side server system will speed service to remote locations. Previous relay satellites could only pass information on to ground-based routers. This was often passed right back for further relay. Space-side switching of cross-planetary packets can therefore preserve precious bandwidth by cutting out such back-and-forth.
Satellites won’t be serving Rickrolls and cats who happen to laugh out loud anytime soon: the extremely limited bandwidth of radio transmissions means this is more for “actual communications with useful content”, which amazingly enough don’t usually involve three minute videos. Or fake facebook farms. Or pretty much anything else you’re using it for. It also serves one of the internet’s original functions, acting as a communications system utterly immune to anything happening on the ground.
The system is scheduled for three months of military tests starting in 2010, after which it’ll move on to commercial activity. Because nothing could go wrong with ex-military hardware out in space with the ability to access our human computer networks.
Luke McKinney
IRIS Project http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/48399
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