CLEO, the Cisco router in Low Earth Orbit, is a commercial Internet router launched into space in September 2003 as a hosted payload onboard the UK-DMC satellite.

CLEO is an assembly of a Cisco 3251 mobile access router and serial card. CLEO is a full Cisco router running commercial off-the-shelf Cisco IOS software in orbit: IOS release 12.2(11)YQ of September 2002. CLEO is the first Cisco router in space.

Here is material overviewing what CLEO is, how it was integrated into the UK-DMC satellite built by SSTL and launched into orbit, and how CLEO was tested by an international collaboration of civil, commercial and military organisations. That work with CLEO has been recognised with a number of awards and ceremonies.

CLEO has been in orbit for over five years and has been tested in orbit for over four years. CLEO has been powered up for use more than one hundred times. Access to the CLEO router was demonstrated to the AFEI Net-Centric Operations 2005 conference (May 2005) and at the IEEE Milcom 2005 conference and exhibition (October 2005).

On 29 March 2007 CLEO was configured for and tested on IPsec and IPv6 use, making this the first use of IPv6 onboard a satellite in orbit. And we made Slashdot - again.

The success of CLEO has led to:

• further collaboration to develop the Saratoga file transfer protocol for delay-tolerant networking.
• the first tests in space of the Bundle Protocol for the Interplanetary Internet.
• follow-on work to put routers on geostationary satellites under the IRIS Internet Routing in Space project
  (US military plans to put Internet router in space, John Blau, IDG News service, 12 April 2007).

Slideset
Available here is a slideset summarising CLEO (updated 26 November 2008):

• High-resolution Powerpoint presentation including animated slides and detailed notes (21M)
• Acrobat notes pages without animations
• Acrobat slides pages without animations

Video
A shorter routing in space presentation (thirty minutes, slides) was recorded in London on 12 June 2008.

Video describing the CLEO router in space (ten minutes, high-resolution copies) is also available.

Papers
Highlighted articles are recommended reading. For further information on the testing of the CLEO router, see:

• Investigating operation of the Internet in orbit: Five years of collaboration around CLEO, Lloyd Wood, Will Ivancic, Wesley M. Eddy, Dave Stewart, James Northam and Chris Jackson, IEEE Communications Society Satellite and Space Communications Technical Committee Newsletter, vol. 18 no. 2, pp. 10-11, November 2008.
• Extending the Internet into space, Stefano Venturi, Paolo Massafra and Klaus-Peter Doerpelkus, ch. 8, Aerospace Technologies and Applications for Dual Use, Marina Ruggieri (ed.), River Publishers, 2008.
• IPv6 and IPsec Tests of a Space-Based Asset, the Cisco router in Low Earth Orbit (CLEO), Will Ivancic, Dave Stewart, Lloyd Wood, Chris Jackson, James Northam and James Wilhelm, draft NASA technical memo, December 2007.
• IPv6 and IPsec on a satellite in space, Lloyd Wood, Will Ivancic, Dave Stewart, James Northam, Chris Jackson and Alex da Silva Curiel, 58th International Astronautical Congress, Hyderabad, India, September 2007.
• Connections amidst the emptiness: internet protocol in space, Richard Sanford, Commerce in France magazine, Fall 2007, pp. 19-21.
• Using Internet nodes and routers onboard satellites, Lloyd Wood, Will Ivancic, Dave Hodgson, Eric Miller, Brett Conner, Scott Lynch, Chris Jackson, Alex da Silva Curiel, Dave Cooke, Dan Shell, Jon Walke and Dave Stewart, special issue on Space Networks, International Journal of Satellite Communications and Networking, vol. 25 issue 2, pp. 195-216, March/April 2007.
• Cisco router on UK-DMC first to use IPv6 onboard a satellite in orbit, SSTL news item, 29 March 2007.
• Small satellite multi-mission command and control for maximum effect, Eric Miller, Richard Lane, Allen Kirkham, Omar Medina, Will Ivancic, Brenda Jones, Ron Risty, US Air Force Space Command's High Frontier, vol. 3 no. 1, pp. 58-64, November 2006.
• Internet to Orbit, Daniel Floreani and Lloyd Wood, Cisco Systems Packet Magazine, vol. 17 no. 3, third quarter 2005, pp. 19-23.
• Secure, Network-Centric Operations of a Space-Based Asset: Cisco Router in Low-Earth Orbit (CLEO) and Virtual Mission Operations Center (VMOC), Will Ivancic, Dave Stewart, Dan Shell, Lloyd Wood, Phil Paulsen, Chris Jackson, Dave Hodgson, James Northam, Neville Bean, Eric Miller, Mark Graves, Lance Kurisaki, NASA technical memorandum TM-2005-213556, May 2005.
• Cisco Systems is at the Forefront of Extending the Internet Into Space, Jenny Carless, Cisco Newsroom story, as seen on Newsroom, 30 June 2004.

Access to the CLEO router was demonstrated to the AFEI Net-Centric Operations 2005 conference (May 2005) and at the IEEE Milcom 2005 conference and exhibition (October 2005).

Commentary on CLEO in the blogosphere includes:

• Interview with Rick Sanford, David Livingston, The Space Show, podcast, 4:00 -, 1 February 2006.
• 2005: a Cisco Space Odyssey, Tony Kinner, ITproPortal Technology Watch, 24 November 2005.
• Cisco goes to space, Roland Piquepaille, ZDNet Emerging Technology Trends, 19 November 2005.
• Router in the sky, Om Malik, 19 November 2005.
• Mostly News Show 4, podcast, 8:33 - 9:40, 4 November 2005.

• Net reaches out to final frontier, BBC News, 13 April 2007.
• Enterpreneurs' final frontier, Rick Merritt, EETimes, 1 January 2007.
• Secure networks for military and first responders, NASA feature, 28 November 2006.
• Looking for Orbital Routers, Defense News, 24 April 2006.
• Cisco in space, Phil Hochmuth, Network World, vol. 22 no. 43, 31 October 2005.
• The Force is with IP, Peter Coffee, eWeek, 31 October 2005.
• Driving down mission costs (offline), Military Aerospace Technology, vol. 4 no. 3, 20 October 2005.
• Protocols in Space (offline), Military Information Technology, vol. 9 no. 8, 4 October 2005.
• IP in the sky, Michael Desmond, Government Computer News vol. 24 no. 21, 1 August 2005.
• NASA report sees potential for IP-based space communications (offline), Military Information Technology, vol. 9 no. 4, 13 June 2005.
• Technology initiatives in support of joint warfighters - seamless integration from space to mud, Michael Schexnayder, United States Army, December 2004.
• Keeping troops virtually in the loop, Henry S. Kenyon, Signal, Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA) magazine, August 2004.
• Seeking the shortest distance, Janene Scully, Santa Maria Times, 16 June 2004. Also published as VMOC: Military eyes in the sky, Janene Scully, The Lompoc Record, 16 June 2004.
• 14AF, Space Battlelab demonstrate satellite capabilities using Internet (offline), Space and Missile Times, Vandenberg Air Force Base, 11 June 2004.
• Cisco takes its Internet router to space (offline), Jason Bates, Space News, 19 April 2004.
• The space industry needs dedicated partners, vendors need not apply, advertisement feature, pp. 66-67, D. Mitchell (ed.), Quest for Space 2004, Belmont International, ISBN 1-891965-10-7.

Other conference papers describing work with the CLEO router in orbit include:

• K. Suzuki, N. Nishinaga, H. Kato, N. Omoto and Y. Suga, Near Real-time IP based disaster imaging data acquisition system using small satellite, The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers General Assembly, 2007, B-3-5, p. 255, September 2007.
• L. Wood, D. Shell, W. Ivancic, B. Conner, E. Miller, D. Stewart and D. Hodgson, CLEO and VMOC: enabling warfighters to task space payloads, IEEE Milcom 2005, Atlantic City, New Jersey, 17-20 October 2005.
• B. P. Conner, L. Dikeman, V. Osweiler, D. Schoenfelt, S. Groves, P. E. Paulsen, W. Ivancic, J. Walke and E. Miller, Bringing Space Capabilities to the Warfighter: Virtual Mission Operations Center (VMOC), paper SSC04-II-7, 18th Annual AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites, Logan, Utah, 9-12 August 2004.
• L. Wood, A. da Silva Curiel, J. Anzalchi, D. Cooke and C. Jackson, Slot clouds: getting more from orbital slots with networking, conference paper IAC-03-U.4.07, 54th International Astronautical Congress, Bremen, Germany, 29 September - 3 October 2003.

Papers placing the CLEO work in context:

• K. Hogie, E. Criscuolo and R. Parise, Putting more Internet nodes in space, CSC World, Computer Sciences Corporation, pp. 21-23, April/June 2006.
• K. Hogie, E. Criscuolo and R. Parise, Using standard Internet Protocols and applications in space, Computer Networks, special issue on Interplanetary Internet, vol. 47 no. 5, pp. 603-650, April 2005.

Coverage of the launch into space:

• IT's final frontier, Colin Haley, internetnews.com, 5 March 2004.
• Internet Space, Shane Harris, Government Executive, 14 October 2003.
• Space: The final sales opportunity (offline), Andrew Donoghue, ZDNet UK, 7 October 2003.
• Cisco shoots for the stars, David M. Ewalt, InformationWeek, 6 October 2003.
• Shooting for space, Caron Carlson, eWeek, 6 October 2003.
• Space No Longer Final Frontier for Cisco Internet Gear, Charles Waltner, Cisco press release, 26 September 2003.

Coverage from around the world:

• Cisco w kosmosie (in Polish), Rozmawiali Krzysztof Jakubik and Rafal Janus, Net focus, 18 November 2009.
• Kosmiczny router Cisco (in Polish), Janusz Chustecki, IT Partner, from IDG News Service, 8 July 2009.
• Geeks in space (in Polish), Cisco Forum blog, 26 March 2009.
• in Czech, Lubos Klaska, 2 January 2006.
• Force - in IP (Russian translation of Peter Coffee's The Force is with IP), 21 December 2005.
• Cisco in Space (in Russian), 24 November 2005.
• L'IP è pronto per la conquista dello spazio (Italian), Network World Online, 17 November 2005.
• coverage in Hungarian, 26 May 2004.
• Cisco teste le premier routeur dans l'espace (in French), Etats-Unis Espace no. 313, 25 April 2004.

...and our Internet to Orbit article is also available in Japanese and Chinese. Further information on VMOC is available.

Lloyd Wood (L.Wood@surrey.ac.uk)