I am so far into the weeds and yet I need this in my life
Interplanetary Overlay Network (ION) is NASA/JPL’s implementation of Delay/Disruption-Tolerant Networking (DTN) — a store‑carry‑forward network architecture designed to move data reliably across links that are long‑delay, intermittently connected, and asymmetric, where the end‑to‑end connectivity assumed by TCP/IP simply does not exist. ION implements the DTN architecture of Internet RFC 4838 together with Bundle Protocol version 7 (BPv7, RFC 9171) and version 6 (BPv6, RFC 5050), and surrounds them with a full stack of transport protocols, security, routing, and application services.
ION is engineered for both flight and ground systems: it runs within a fixed memory budget, checkpoints protocol state and in‑transit data to persistent storage so a node survives a reset, and ports across operating systems from real‑time flight executives to Linux servers. It is a flight‑proven, operational implementation — used as the baseline for science‑instrument data handling on the International Space Station and in gateway/relay roles for command, telemetry, and science downlink.
