Is ZeroC's ICE under consideration? It seems like it has a lot of the features people have been discussing, including encryption and compression, ability to reduce inter-host communication for topics, distributed registries, and even ROS-like parameters (though they live on each component rather than on a central parameter server). It has a pretty similar though more general message format.

—Ben

On Sat, Feb 22, 2014 at 12:16 AM, Geoffrey Biggs <geoffrey.biggs@aist.go.jp> wrote:

On 21/02/14 08:45, Brian Gerkey wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 3:26 PM, Aravind Sundaresan
> <asundaresan@gmail.com> wrote:
>> We are using ROS in a DARPA program where we need the communication between
>> the master and nodes as well as the messaging to be secure. Is there anybody
>> else who finds this important? Does DDS provide secure communications?
>
> You're not alone in wanting secure communications for robotics.  We
> would be remiss in a major rewrite to completely ignore security
> (which is not to say that we must implement security mechanisms, but
> we'd better at least end up with a solid story about our approach to
> security, with clear guidance to users).
>
> As I understand it, there's a proposed extension to the DDS spec,
> currently under review, to add security.  Here's a relevant
> presentation:
>
> http://www.slideshare.net/GerardoPardo/dds-security-standard
>
> But given that DDS is apparently used in so many mission-critical
> applications, surely there's some encryption happening, perhaps in
> non-standard vendor-specific ways that vary by implementation?  Or
> perhaps they're using DDS like we use ROS, where you're expected
> secure your network.

The answer to this is more along the lines of the original target
audience of DDS operating private/closed networks. When all your
communication happens within a single Navy frigate on dedicated
communication wires, security is less problematic. DDS growing beyond
its original audience has caused many vendors to start thinking about
how to do security. A VPN is one option, but obviously many users want
something a bit lighter weight.

Geoff

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