Altrustic routers would optimize the Internet

By at 3:44 pm Friday, Feb 14

A paper by two Cornell researchers concludes, based on network modelling, that cooperation among routers would create significant performance improvements on the Internet.
A little altruism could go a long way in speeding up the Internet.

That's the conclusion two Cornell University computer scientists came to after finding that computer networks tend to be "selfish" when each tries to route traffic by the fastest pathway, causing that path to become congested and slow.

If the routers that direct the packets of data could be programmed with some altruism, the information might be able to reach its destination a little faster while allowing other packets to also move more quickly.

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Cory Doctorow

Upcoming appearances

* Feb 9, 2012, DeKalb, IL: Day of Doctorow, NIU
* Feb 10-12, 2012, Chicago, IL: Capricon 32
* Feb 13, 2012, Arlington, TX: UT Arlington College of Engineering Distinguished Speaker Series
* Feb 16, 2012, Victoria, BC: 13th Annual Privacy and Security Conference

Recent books:
* Context (essays)
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* For the Win (YA novel)
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