The Interplanetary Network Node: Architecture and Preliminary Performance Evaluation

In the framework of the so called InterPlaNetary (IPN) Internet, the paper surveys possible advanced communications and networking solutions applied by a specific IPN node architecture. The proposed solutions have been preliminarily evaluated by using the ns2 simulator by considering possible network status changes due to the nodes’ movements, typical in the deep space scenario. In particular, the performance study on one hand highlights the role of the Multicast and, on the other hand, it shows the effects of new possible control approaches such as the dynamic Link Selection in the IPN network. The performance study represents the main paper contribution.