Meshing costs, the price of RAH's battery

Tyler Durden camera_lumina at hotmail.com
Sat Apr 10 08:32:29 PDT 2004


"So, get a clue.  When your battery runs out, you
get *zero* benefit from the mesh.  Or even your local
device *sans network*."

Well, as usual I don't think I'm understanding you here. In my example I'm 
imagining I'm a livery cab driver or something. In that case, instantaneous 
micro-traffic-conditions can be very valuable in NYC.
In that environment, a cabbie will quickly understand that the network will 
collapse if all of the wireless nodes act to conserve power by not 
re-transmitting information. So even though it costs you something to route 
a packet you yourself will not use, if you're even reasonably smart you'll 
pass some on until you're nearing your batteries exhaustion, then perhaps go 
into a listening mode.

(And of course, it may easily be possible to form spontaneous VLANs that 
deal only with traffic, and then only route those packets...but that doesn't 
change my argument any.)


-TD




>From: "Major Variola (ret)" <mv at cdc.gov>
>To: "cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net" <cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net>
>Subject: Re: Meshing costs, the price of RAH's battery
>Date: Fri, 09 Apr 2004 21:03:35 -0700
>
>At 07:06 PM 4/9/04 -0400, Tyler Durden wrote:
> >RAH wrote...
> >
> >>At 10:43 AM -0700 4/9/04, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
> >> >Meshnets (everyone's a router) is cool, admittedly.  But are you
>going
> >> >to spend *your* battery life routing someone else's message?
> >>
> >>Only if they pay me cash
> >
> >Someone enlighten me here...I don't see this as obvious. I might
>certainly
> >be willing to pay to route someone else's message if I understand that
>to be
> >the real cost of mesh connectivity.
>
>One can run a P2P app from mains-powered home machine
>and incur only a minor bandwidth penalty, which you can
>possibly throttle when you're busy.  But my
>understanding of *mobile* devices (where meshing matters) is that they
>are
>severely power constrained.  To the extent that
>boozohol power cells and various semiconductor/logic
>tricks are being used, despite the difficulties they require.
>
>So, get a clue.  When your battery runs out, you
>get *zero* benefit from the mesh.  Or even your local
>device *sans network*.
>
> >Of course, the battery lifetime acts as the "weighting" factor
>here...if
> >only a small % of the traffic I'm routing belongs to me, then I may not
>be
> >so willing to route it if my battery lifetime is short. As battery time
>
> >lifetime increases however (though this sorely lags behind Moore's law)
>then
> >more and more people will be willing to route.
>
>The traffic-fraction and the extrapolation of Moore's 'law' are largely
>irrelevant
>for the next decade.  In fact, given that standby usage will *decrease*
>relative
>to transmit usage only makes the relative proportions worse.  I don't
>care if you use a picoamp on standby/listen, you'll still need a few
>milliwatts to forward a packet.  Or more, if there are no nearby
>cooperative nodes.
>
>Sure, in the distant future, mobile power may so vastly dominate
>power usage that meshes become practical.  (There's even
>positive feedback, the more meshnodes the less transmit power.)
>Meantime, uncompensated altruism is maladaptive.
>
>With something like soldier-radios, or smart dusts, meshes will happen
>sooner, since the
>Many eat the Few.  For *your* cellphone, you have a *long* time to wait
>for it to be Rational to share your battery with randoms.
>
>In RAH's defense, mesh-everything is not necessary for the
>disintermediation,
>which he idiosyncratically calles 'geodesic' info flow, to have big
>effects.
>Neither is a geodesic (in any physical or otherwise meaningful sense)
>net important.
>Just cheaper info to more people.  And that's been happening since
>before
>ponies carried dead trees with stamps.
>
>Re-reading RAH's "if they pay me enough" reply, it is also right that a
>price can be set on the wattage you've sherpa'ed, perhaps so that you
>can pay off your usage of said mesh
>by letting others use your batteries.  And the micropayments will be
>feasible thanks to
>real cheap info + crypto, what RAH's undiagnosed brain tumor labels
>geodesic info flow.   Perhaps the price of being a meshrouter to others
>will
>even depend on the wattage you have left.  Your phone will negotiate
>with Fred's phone (has 10 Joules left but is 1000 m away) and Joe's
>(has 5 Joules but is 100 m away).
>
>But that's economics/physics applied to resource usage, nothing new,
>despite the neologisms and extrapolation.
>
>
>
>
>

_________________________________________________________________
Watch LIVE baseball games on your computer with MLB.TV, included with MSN 
Premium! 
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/mlb&pgmarket=en-us/go/onm00200439ave/direct/01/





More information about the cypherpunks-legacy mailing list