Houndstooth: Canine pack mesh networking

By at 6:46 am Thursday, Aug 1

Nice satire from Glenn Fleishman touches on all my favorite memes: wireless, organic modelling, and mesh networks.
Houndstooth is a dramatic new mesh network technology that utilizes algorithms derived from canine-pack clustering. With Houndstooth, random aggregations of data are transferred at a variety of speeds based on pack dynamics and distances. A special front-to-end pack discovery protocol allows each node to discover and authenticate new nodes. Best of all, you can redeploy existing logistics to take advantage of pack-based mesh networking by using actual dogs that you may already own or have access to.

Each dog wears a small Houndstooth transceiver, powered by a pedometer attached to a dog's strong back legs. As dogs enter and leave packs, both store-and-forward (known as fetch-and-retrieve in the Houndstooth terminology) and live routed (off-leash protocol) data handling are possible. Parasitic networking by non-pack Houndstooth transceivers are avoided through regular deworming of the connection.

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Cory Doctorow

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