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AnonTechie writes:

Boffins [Scientists] that want to see Internet protocols extend to outer space – the so-called “Interplanetary Internet” – need to prove they're offering something useful, according to one of the father-figures of the Earth-bound Internet.

Vint Cerf, who has taken an interest in beyond-Earth applications for the Internet protocol stack since the 1990s, told last week's InterPlanetary Networking SIG (IPNSIG) meeting that to get beyond a mere curiosity, the SIG needs to be useful.

“Our challenge, to the extent that we're interested in serious expansion of communications capability for space exploration, is to demonstrate its utility,” Cerf told the gathering.

“It's not that anyone thinks that you should just build this interplanetary thing and hope that somebody uses it,” he added.

One possibility, for example, is that spacecraft that support these kinds of protocols could, having fulfilled their primary mission, have a longer economically-useful life if they can then become nodes in the interplanetary backbone.

And there's no doubt that there'll be a lot more data being flung around in space: last year, for example, the success of NASA's LADEE broadband experiment showed that free space optics could cook along at hundreds of megabits a second without an atmosphere to get in the way.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/27/interplanetary_network_sig/

IPNSIG presentations and videos: http://ipnsig.org/2015/05/26/speaker-presentation-materials-2015/