Internet pioneer prepares for 'space web' to take off

ONE of the internet's pioneers yesterday revealed he is working on technology for a "space web" which would link planets together and allow interplanetary surfing.

Vint Cerf, vice president of Google and the search company's chief internet visionary, unveiled plans for the 'solar web' in a speech to the Edinburgh International Television Festival.

The project is being worked on by Nasa and America's Jet Propulsion Lab and is not connected with Google. The scientist said while space probes currently "talk" to earth via extended radio links, he wanted to translate the way the internet works into space. He said: "What my colleagues and I would like to do is built a more elaborate networking capability and then standardise the protocols for deep space communication in the same way we standardised protocols on the internet."

Cerf said the proposal involved a more robust version of the technology that makes the internet work to account for the vast distances involved and possibility of disruption. He said that if the present internet system were used, it would take someone on earth 40 minutes to read a web page on a computer on Mars.

Cerf is widely credited as a pioneer of the internet for his role in 1969 in devising the software that allows 'packets' of data to be sent electronically.