[arin-ppml] Draft Policy ARIN-2026-1: Taking IP To Other Planets (TIPTOP)

[Tony Li]

Hi Fernando,

> 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.
> 

There are only a handful of agencies.  That is not the issue.  The real problem occurs because they are geographically dispersed and would naturally get addresses from their local RIR. But when they use them on the moon, for example, they would not aggregate at all.   We might easily expect one prefix per mission.  Today, that’s not seriously problematic, but in the future, this could definitely become annoying.

> 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.
> 

Our job is not just to deal with the next few years, but to anticipate and provide for the long term.  i’d suggest that trying to plan 30 to 50 years into the future would be reasonable.  With that perspective, it is quite clear that recent decreases in the cost of launches has agencies planning for a new Renaissance in space exploration, complete with colonization by many vehicles and human beachheads, all fully interconnected.

Here are some links to some different visions of the future:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/nterplanetary-Internet-Network-Concept-Credits-NASA_fig7_346016205

https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/lunanet_dtn_graphic_100521.png

https://i0.wp.com/spacenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/queqioa-constellation-V3-DSEL-2oct2023-AJ-SN-scaled.jpg?resize=1568%2C886&ssl=1

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/366211910/figure/fig1/AS:11431281106938421@1670901461512/Reference-architecture-for-future-SpaceNets-EOSN-Earth-Orbit-Satellite-Network-SN.ppm

Cheers,
Tony

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