HP claims first commercial Ethernet switch in space

Stephen Withers
Friday, 13 June 2008 11:58

IT Industry - Strategy

The ESA's Columbus laboratory module was added to the International Space Station in February, but Hewlett-Packard has only now chosen to reveal that the LAN onboard Columbus uses a ProCurve 2524 switch.

This is said to be the first time a commercial Ethernet switch has been used in space.

Given that Columbus has a projected life of ten years and the cost and lead time required to take replacement parts to the ISS, this is a real vote of confidence in the ProCurve switch.

Somehow, we doubt that HP's next-business-day replacement warranty reaches as far as the ISS, but you couldn't really complain if being in orbit is not one of the "many locations around the world" where that service is offered.

"To put it simply, ProCurve was the only networking vendor whose switches offered us the level of reliability and performance required to handle the intense demands on board Columbus," said Rolf Schmidhuber, Columbus data management system engineer for EADS Astrium Space Transportation.

He explained that the low chip count inside the switch reduces its susceptibility to radiation and mechanical duress.

Columbus was launched with experiments covering biology, physiology, fluid science and other disciplines.

Data from the laboratory module is relayed to the Columbus Control Centre in Germany.