Telepocalypse

A fatal infection

I would urge readers to drop the baby, turn off the oven, sit down and read this MIT paper on viral networking.

In a nutshell, it describes the future of mesh networks. There are two core results:

• Throughput increases with node density. More nodes add to capacity, not divide it.
• Latency is not a problem.

This is the E=mc² of communications. It means that fibre to the home and so on are just icing on the cake. The lower bound for the future of connectivity is going to be damned high wherever humans or their powered objects congregate.

It means the end game is already pre-determined. Centralised telecom won't exist in its current form. Don't hold long-dated bonds in network operators or their equipment suppliers.

The caveat? Getting this into reality is, as they say, non-trivial. You have to make it scale in a world where bad actors may be at play. You have to get all the non-functional stuff right, like battery life. We could be talking anything from years to decades. It's as big a jump as E=mc² to the atom bomb -- the Manhattan Project of communications.

But the theory is rock solid, and the future inevitable. You've been warned.