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Wait, how does the Mesh work again?

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Sun, 2014-03-16 00:17
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Noble Pigeon Noble Pigeon's picture
Wait, how does the Mesh work again?
So last Templecon I played in Marc Huete's game of Continuity (who may or may nor lurk these forums, I don't know). One of the things I noticed is that there was apparently things like physical servers and even a mainframe on the station we were on. Normally I thought those things were rendered obsolete in Eclipse Phase and figured that he had those things onboard for the sake of not having to explain the Mesh's infrastructure. But then I realized that I know absolutely nothing about computer science. If someone tried explaining port forwarding to me my eyes would glaze over in about 6 seconds. All I know about the Mesh in Eclipse Phase is that it’s the super Internet of the future and has no physical infrastructure whatsoever beyond hardwired systems or communication relays, which is probably an oversimplification. So what exactly would a typical Mesh infrastructure be like on a station? What's the use of an "ops center" as there was in Continuity?
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"Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.” -Abraham Lincoln, State of the Union address
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Sun, 2014-03-16 02:22
DivineWrath DivineWrath's picture
Yes, the mesh is a super
Yes, the mesh is a super internet. One of the perks of that is it can borrow the processing power of other devices giving any program more processing power (by using the processing power of other devices). It can also automatically figure out how to talk to any other device on the network, figuring out which other device(s) can reach the other devices and which devices can reach those devices and so on... I'm sure there would a loss of processing power, since there would be a need for processing power to manage the mesh and loss of matter to build the radio transmitters so the devices can communicate with each other. Other problems are, it can be radio jammed, it is difficult to protect every device on the network, and it is certainly possible to listen in on the transmissions (even if you don't have the cryptography keys needed to read the data at the time). Servers would have a far better ability to operate on its own without the mesh and could handle many resource intense tasks by itself. Also, a single device would be easier to defend than a full mesh. It also would have a better potential to be optimized, above and beyond what printing a new ecto and connecting it to the mesh would bring. I don't know the age of the station in the mentioned adventure, but it could old enough that it is a little bit behind in technology. It could be that the servers might be the best the station has for computer technology, or maybe not. A research station would have the need for immense processing power.
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Sun, 2014-03-16 07:54
Lorsa Lorsa's picture
Mesh networks is something
Mesh networks are something people are already looking into today as far as I know. You are most definitely going to see them in your lifetime at least. The only real difference between a mesh network and the internet we have today is that each device functions as a router and signal transmitter to all the other devices in its range in addition to everything else it is doing. Every device becomes a relay that sends signals further to where they're supposed to go thus increasing the range of the wireless network without having to build large transmitters all over the place. You still need physical devices to have the mesh network. In fact, you probably need MORE devices than you do for a normal network (but the good thing is that devices are everywhere). The Mesh doesn't really "go down" ever, but if there are no devices within range of each other then no network can be made. It's also susceptible to signal jamming but what network isn't? Having servers and mainframes isn't at all strange. They are just really powerful devices, capable of running calculations faster than your average cranial computer. For added security, you could have your mainframe be disconnected from the mesh network and thus be less susceptible to hacking and whatnot. It all depends what it is for. You don't NEED a server to have a mesh network, like you do with internet today, but devices that are optimised for one purpose or another is ALWAYS going to be a thing.
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Wed, 2014-03-19 05:25
dsbinla dsbinla's picture
You forgot the Big Bads
Remember that sufficiently powerful computers can host TITANS (explicitly said to be servers of various kinds, although references beyond the Myrmidon pieces aboard the Song Cai Flower are beyond me right now), and as a result are banned by basically everyone; no one wants to host the next insane Seed AI. All advanced processing clusters are partitioned and physically separated to avoid being host to such powerful AGIs.
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Thu, 2014-03-20 09:44
nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture
The idea with the mesh is
The idea with the mesh is everything is distributed and swappable. Your Internet is down? Your device automatically connects to your neighbor's wi-fi, to satellites, to public wi-fi, or daisy-chains through other devices. The server hosting your data is down? That's okay, that data is replicated on lots of other devices, and it can pull that data easily, without your noticing a slowdown. Not enough processing power on your watch to do that calculation? That's okay, your watch will reach out to other devices in the area, split up the calculation among them, and collate the results. Everything splits across the web, and rejoins to give you a cohesive user experience. Continuity is a special case because of its distance from everything else. That data still moves at the speed of light, but being AUs from the nearest habitat means: 1) You need a big antenna to connect (which you lose at the beginning of the adventure) 2) There's major delay in transmission, on the order of hours, which means it's less than useful for your purposes. The result is the crew only has the computational resources on the station itself (a mini-mesh, if you will). And since everything is shut down, that isn't very much. Conceivably, players can pull together other devices on the station to get enough processing power to run Hans, but I've never seen that. Hope you enjoyed the game regardless :)
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Thu, 2014-03-20 19:57
Noble Pigeon Noble Pigeon's picture
Lorsa wrote:Mesh networks are
Lorsa wrote:
Mesh networks are something people are already looking into today as far as I know. You are most definitely going to see them in your lifetime at least. The only real difference between a mesh network and the internet we have today is that each device functions as a router and signal transmitter to all the other devices in its range in addition to everything else it is doing. Every device becomes a relay that sends signals further to where they're supposed to go thus increasing the range of the wireless network without having to build large transmitters all over the place. You still need physical devices to have the mesh network. In fact, you probably need MORE devices than you do for a normal network (but the good thing is that devices are everywhere). The Mesh doesn't really "go down" ever, but if there are no devices within range of each other then no network can be made. It's also susceptible to signal jamming but what network isn't? Having servers and mainframes isn't at all strange. They are just really powerful devices, capable of running calculations faster than your average cranial computer. For added security, you could have your mainframe be disconnected from the mesh network and thus be less susceptible to hacking and whatnot. It all depends what it is for. You don't NEED a server to have a mesh network, like you do with internet today, but devices that are optimised for one purpose or another is ALWAYS going to be a thing.
That makes a bit more sense now, though as dsbinla pointed out it would make sense for mainframes and other super-computers to be physically separated from each other after the minor TITAN incident on Earth.
nezumi.hebereke wrote:
The idea with the mesh is everything is distributed and swappable. Your Internet is down? Your device automatically connects to your neighbor's wi-fi, to satellites, to public wi-fi, or daisy-chains through other devices. The server hosting your data is down? That's okay, that data is replicated on lots of other devices, and it can pull that data easily, without your noticing a slowdown. Not enough processing power on your watch to do that calculation? That's okay, your watch will reach out to other devices in the area, split up the calculation among them, and collate the results. Everything splits across the web, and rejoins to give you a cohesive user experience. Continuity is a special case because of its distance from everything else. That data still moves at the speed of light, but being AUs from the nearest habitat means: 1) You need a big antenna to connect (which you lose at the beginning of the adventure) 2) There's major delay in transmission, on the order of hours, which means it's less than useful for your purposes. The result is the crew only has the computational resources on the station itself (a mini-mesh, if you will). And since everything is shut down, that isn't very much. Conceivably, players can pull together other devices on the station to get enough processing power to run Hans, but I've never seen that. Hope you enjoyed the game regardless :)
You know I shouldn't be surprised that you'd be on these forums, but...well, color me surprised! You bet I enjoyed the game, since a) I can tell people I survived the Eclipse Phase equivalent of the Tomb of Horrors and b) you were a great DM! (I was the inconspicuous Jovian Spy by the name of Tanaka for clarification :> ) Reading it after you ran the glorious game, I can also see how Continuity is a good intro for Eclipse Phase. A lot of the more crazy aspects of the setting play much less of a role than they normally do, and rep networks don't play a role at all.
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"Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.” -Abraham Lincoln, State of the Union address
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Fri, 2014-03-21 11:36
nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture
No one expected the Jovian
No one expected the Jovian spy was actually a SPY! Yes, a great game, glad you enjoyed :)
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Sat, 2014-03-22 10:31
Lorsa Lorsa's picture
Noble Pigeon wrote:That makes
Noble Pigeon wrote:
That makes a bit more sense now, though as dsbinla pointed out it would make sense for mainframes and other super-computers to be physically separated from each other after the minor TITAN incident on Earth.
Glad to help. And yes, the security minded will try to keep the really fancy computers away from public access or not have them at all. But if there's one thing we've learned from history is that if there's something that's stupid to do, someone's going to do it... I mean, the TITANS are gone, right?
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Sat, 2014-03-22 11:02
Noble Pigeon Noble Pigeon's picture
Lorsa wrote:Noble Pigeon
Lorsa wrote:
Noble Pigeon wrote:
That makes a bit more sense now, though as dsbinla pointed out it would make sense for mainframes and other super-computers to be physically separated from each other after the minor TITAN incident on Earth.
Glad to help. And yes, the security minded will try to keep the really fancy computers away from public access or not have them at all. But if there's one thing we've learned from history is that if there's something that's stupid to do, someone's going to do it... [b]I mean, the TITANS are gone, right?[/b]
y͠͏͓͉̱͎e̻̥̹͕͓̭͈s̤̥̻͓̥̗̫͇̀͘͟
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"Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.” -Abraham Lincoln, State of the Union address
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