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Because mankind is probably going to become an interplanetary civilization during this century:

Would a spaceship using quantum teleportation hardware that provides IPv6 connectivity between its tripulation and earth, considered as a part of the internet of the things?

Let's say it shares to the public some information using web services, like for example its telemetry.

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    I believe that having quantum entanglement will make IP protocol obsolete. Commented Jun 8, 2017 at 5:54
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    no. This is just a basic wide area networking question. Generic infrastructure is not part of the IoT, unless it is specific to an IoT application Commented Jun 8, 2017 at 7:09
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    As far as there are machines communicating with each and other, I would consider it as IoT. Distance is a number, quantums are part of underlying technology. There is actually a term M2M, I am not sure which of them suits better for this.
    – mico
    Commented Jun 8, 2017 at 8:25
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    This is no different than any other computer on the internet, so no, I wouldn't consider it IoT. IoT is generally understood to mean either small sensor-level devices, or things-that-were-not-normally-internet-capable-until-now, e.g., a toaster, doorbell, or traffic light. Not sure what "tripulation" means in this context. Commented Jun 8, 2017 at 14:35
  • How about, if it is connected to the Internet, then it's part of the thing and thereby classified as the Internet of Things?
    – Facebook
    Commented Jun 13, 2017 at 4:19

3 Answers 3

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Before this question is closed, I would like to invite anyone interested in the topic to read up on Delay-tolerant networking.

Until quantum entanglement arrives and is stable, we can be grateful that DARPA, NASA, et al, have already considered this and developed a proposal for the Interplanetary Internet (IPN).

Follow the links from there and you will learn all that you could wish to know.

Basically, whereas TCP/IP will drop undeliverable packets, a Delay/Disruption Tolerant Network will store and forward. Thus, if your not quantumly entangled spaceship slips behind Jupiter and cannot see the earth, it will wait until it has orbited, then perhaps send the data packet to a relay orbiting Mars, which might, in turn, have to store until it can see the Earth, then ultimately forward the packet.

There are already many existing projects using DTN, beginning with the famous zebranet (Google for zebranet wildlife tracking).

I have developed a few such projects myself, but an not allowed to discuss them.

I am sure that a little imagination and a handful of Raspberry Pi Zero Ws would allow you develop an interesting project for your own

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The definition of IoT, as per ITU, as documented in ITU-T Y.2060:

IoT can be viewed as a global infrastructure for the information society, enabling advanced services by interconnecting (physical and virtual) things based on existing and evolving interoperable information and communication technologies (ICT).

This definition seems to emphasize existing and evolving interoperable information and communication technologies. Quantum teleportation seems very nascent at this time to come under a standards body purview to qualify for any deployment IoT applications.

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@SeanHoulihane has it right, the thing of belonging to IoT or not is not automatically so that some network structure or part of it is IoT.

Word 'Internet' in IoT, yes, it refers to some communication in Internet but actually the purpose of communication, having the word 'Things' is more important.

Quantums may form some combo that works machine to machine, but as I understand your question you refer to human-to-machine connection more than that of reading some sensors from other side of space. That makes the difference: if machines read data by themselves, react themselves to it and people afterwards can read the results we speak of IoT.

Otherwise it is Internet and IP protocol over quantum teleport, which is a new wave in the traditional Internet.

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    By the way, traditional Internet is formed of millions and billions of sub networks, that communicate machine to machine and we do not call that IoT. We call it the Internet.
    – mico
    Commented Jun 8, 2017 at 13:13
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    When reading the Wikipedia article it reveals quantum teleportation is a normal communication used to transfer a qubic as two bits. It uses normal psysical laws, speed of light etc but the trick is to transfer a qubic state.
    – mico
    Commented Jun 8, 2017 at 15:16

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