[MLB-WIRELESS] Article: Self Assembling Networks (and Toaster Ovens)

[John Dalton]

I sent this to the Sydney list, but it might also be
of interest to people on this list.

-------------------
Here is an interesting article (lifted from Slashdot):

http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2003/032603/Network_builds_itself_from_scratch_032603.html

In summary, the researchers investigated why ants tend to walk in lines.
What they discovered was if you take a bunch of random nodes
and program them to simulate ants walking in lines, the nodes organise
themselves to form a network with data flowing in a sensible fashion.

As I understand it, ants are analogous to packets and the ground on
which they walk becomes the network hardware.  As a bonus, the network
will reorganise itself around a broken link in a similar way to ants
getting back into line after you pour water on their trail.

Perhaps we could use some of these ideas to route our network?


On a completely unrelated topic, for the hobbyists out there, here is
a guy who uses his toaster oven as a surface mount oven:
http://www.seattlerobotics.org/encoder/200006/oven_art.htm


Regards
John


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