"The next network"No matter how smart the software, a network, Garcia-Luna-Aceves explains, is much more than the digital technology behind the curtain. A network is also the people who use it, and the information that's exchanged across it. Those social factors and information demands should be taken into account when building wireless networks where almost every resource--from bandwidth to battery life--is at a premium.
"The notion that we need to enable everyone to talk one-to-one with everyone else, and maintain the routes to all these sites and nodes that we never use, is a big problem," Garcia-Luna-Aceves says. "So now we are studying how the flows in a network result from common interests and needs."
This idea is somewhat akin to the concept that you don't build highways to everywhere--less-traveled-to destinations are best served by small roads.
Currently, the researchers are exploring how to map a social network on top of a network infrastructure. For example, in a military setting, there's a chain of command, which is a form of social network. So the network needn't require that every device be able to talk to every other device. Meanwhile, many military communication systems require a great deal of bandwidth, which also must be accounted for in the network architecture.
"Only by figuring out the social network and information network overlays can we start talking about increasing the capacity of the network and delivering quality information to the users," Garcia-Luna-Aceves says.
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11:29 am Mon
Jun 7, 2010
Today's wireless networks are outdated, and an effort to fix them
According to UC Santa Cruz professor JJ Garcia-Luna-Aceves, the problem with wireless networks is that they're based on protocols that are nearly 50 years old. Their underlying technology is that of wired networks, using protocols that date back to the 1960s ARPANET. That's why Garcia-Luna-Aceves is hoping to revolutionize networking by taking a look at the science, technology, and even social side of the problem. I profiled Garcia-Luna-Aceves for the latest issue of the UC Santa Cruz Review. From the Review:
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I’m not sure I get the idea of the article…
On one hand he talks about everything talking and working together…and on the other about how some things/devices/people do not need to talk together.
Well, I suppose in real life there are a fair amount of people I will never really need to talk to. But why does that mean I can’t.
All I could take away was the professors inability to understand between can’t and won’t.
Just because I won’t talk to the president (or insert anyone that’s not really in your league, or that would even talk to you period, celebrity for example.) That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have the “ability” to be able to reach him.
Yeah, wouldn’t this kill Peer-to-Peer networks? And who knows what other stuff. Sounds like more control overall.
The military metaphor is apt. You’ll get your data on a need-to-know basis.
This idea is somewhat akin to the concept that you don’t build highways to everywhere–less-traveled-to destinations are best served by small roads.
The problem here is that this statement is false. Less-traveled-to destination are NOT best served by small roads – they are more economically served by them, but a lot more goes into the idea of “best” then just money.
Sounds like a self-pruning network, or self-segmenting. Maybe I’m missing something because I don’t get how that is supposed to save wireless bandwidth or batteries. Unless the wireless devices are also acting as peers, the only bandwidth they should be consuming is by request plus whatever the baseline is to maintain the connection.
Supposing a p2p network of wireless battery powered devices it seems like the same methods of self-organization should work perfectly well as in any other p2p network. Factor in battery power so that the lowest powered devices are never forced to act as a supernode and you are done.
I think the author has it completely wrong. ARPANET was built as an any-to-any network *because* it was built for the military. They understood that any hierarchic system is vulnerable to problems at the top nodes, so they intentionally designed the network to continue to work if it’s most important nodes got nuked. This still works today even though most users are at the ends of wires that are a bit top-down.
Most of the complexity in wireless networks is that they’re served by a star-wired hierarchy, but the users are mobile. Huge amounts of protocol are used so that a user can move between access points or cell towers and have connectivity move with them through different end nodes of the hierarchy. The author wants a solution with stronger hierarchy. Why? Does the author suggest replacing 50-year-old any-to-any technology with 130-year-old telephone-style hierarchy? I don’t get it.
A better way to rethinking wireless networks is to start with the idea that a given user could be anywhere and can be assumed not to be there very soon. If we can find a solution that never sticks that user in a “zone” served by one slice of the hierarchy, then we’re thinking new solutions. P2P isn’t a bad starting point for that.
ARPANET was built as an any-to-any network *because* it was built for the military. They understood that any hierarchic system is vulnerable to problems at the top nodes, so they intentionally designed the network to continue to work if it’s most important nodes got nuked.
ARPANET was *not* built for the military – it was built to link academic institutes, before ARPA became DARPA (i.e became part of the Dept of Defense). Nor was it built that way to survive nuclear war – it was built that way because they knew that nodes could be unreliable enough on their own, never mind deliberate attacks.
Try read up on the subject – there are plenty of good biographies of the people involved, and other writeups of the history of the internet.
“The notion that we need to enable everyone to talk one-to-one with everyone else, and maintain the routes to all these sites and nodes that we never use, is a big problem.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that net neutrality?
#5: “ARPANET was built as an any-to-any network *because* it was built for the military. … they intentionally designed the network to continue to work if it’s most important nodes got nuked.”
That’s a common misconception, actually. ARPA funded the work but the net was not designed for military use, rather for civilian researchers. The non-hierarchical design was just the simplest way to implement it.
What this prof is working on is commonly called “mesh networking” or “ad-hoc networks”. There are a number of groups doing similar work, and the OLPC laptops deployed in 3rd world countries already use it to share data in the absence of a reliable Internet connection.
ARPA funded the work but the net was not designed for military use, rather for civilian researchers.
Right, but remember, that’s ARPA, not DARPA – before being moved into the Department of Defence, it was simply an agency for funding all sorts of special projects, not just those with military purposes.
“This idea is somewhat akin to the concept that you don’t build highways to everywhere–less-traveled-to destinations are best served by small roads.”
I see. No to network neutrality. A faster road to FOX than Common Dreams. No thanks.
I look at it from a perspective of traffic density. You are going to need fatter pipes on a physical consumer network (wired and wireless) serving NYC than you are in Nebraska.
Basically, let the commons invest in utility-type consumer pipes where there are more people trying to access data, and let private enterprise pay the freight for the pipes to Data Centers in the middle of nowhere.
It’s common sense to me…
furthermore, I would imagine that common dreams has more of a capability to take advantage of “open source syndication” (i.e. mirroring) than Fox News would, from a perspective of legal control of the content being presented. Also, Fox news in an attempt to “own” the message would be more apt to centralize their data. If such is the case (based on my own experience in the field, ymmv…) then they would be looking at the cheapest power and the cheapest cage space first, as there is so much competition in the telecom industry that you can sign a long term contract for a fat pipe and pretty much guarantee the carrier will absorb much of the infrastructure cost for you, especially if you are a large customer with an already existing contract.
But hey, don’t let the real world get in the way of your fantasy…
A legally limited amount of bandwidth is available for data transmission for unlicensed nodes like your laptop. Without the traffic segregation provided by wiring, you can easily squeeze more devices into a room than that amount of bandwidth can support. Just ask Steve Jobs!
More channels would solve the problem for a while, but bandwidth use inevitably expands to exceed available bandwidth in rich western leisure societies. That’s the way it works, and has very little to do with the age of the protocols in use.
And that’s why my house and workplace have network wiring to every room, too.