>From: burns@latcs1.lat.oz.au (Jonathan Burns)
Subject: Home Sweet Matrix
Date: 27 May 91 09:56:52 GMT



Jonno looks up from the back table, where he's been interfacing two
decks. (One an old Ono-Sendai 3003, the other a Twin Peaks Tarot.)

He says "Listen, you might be interested in this bit I wrote for
alt.cyberpunk a year or two ago. The topic was roughly, have we
reason to think that public virtual reality would really look like
a Gibsonesque city of lights?"

"I've been rethinking the ideas below lately, and extending them
a bit. Sometime I'm going to let Emil and Viy loose in there."

A couple of deckers perk up. Old-timers are a twist when they get
raving. So naive about the True Meaning, but sometimes they're real
tech on the details...

	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*

I'd like to try something out. Gridpoints are phone numbers.

I jack in. The carrier, ATT-Xerox or somebody, assigns a LAN node to
my deck. This node has a long global identifier, but like all such,
the identifier is hashed into three integers, x-y-z. Now I'm (occupying)
a gridpoint.

If two of us rendezvous at the same point, we can communicate, share
virtual address spaces, etc.

Maybe A-X assigns me a block of nodes (powerful deck). Now I'm a cube.

>From where I stand, I can get a 3D display of the whole global patchboard.
Most of this is not permanently occupied, open for traffic. Clear space.
If I look hard, I can see points winking on and off as people make
phonecalls, do private processing and so on.

Some points, however, are permanently leased. Ownership is manifested
as solid colour; that green block over there is Boeing, for example.
If I'm contracting to Boeing, I'll need to exchange my node for one
of theirs.

By convention, I can change from any node to an adjacent one - move
to another gridpoint. So maybe I'll run a routine to move my block
over there, or maybe I'll just access a line of points inbetween as
store-and-forward nodes (white line darts out ahead of me, zigzags
round a couple of corners, reaches the Boeing block - ding-dong,
good morning Mr Burns, your access is verified).

The adjacent point rule is a practical compromise. A-X and the other
big carriers can pretty well guarantee a 6 GHz signal between each
node and a few others, but not between anywhere and anywhere else.

The Z dimension is special. As computational power increases, the
carriers can support more and more active nodes. Private outfits
can run more nodes on their own power, so they lease them; build
their blocks higher. That way they keep adjacency. (Yes, they could
lease the extra nodes out in the sticks and privately implement
the bandwidth between them. Secret gateways. But read on.)

Negotiating the matrix traffic can be annoying. If I stay within the
fog of other users, they'll keep passing through my block, sharing
CPU time etc, and slowing me down. (Worse, they could hack.) On the
other hand, if I climb above the fog, I'll eventually get to node
addresses that are only sporadically supported by A-X, or not at
all.

<"But Papa Legba" whispers one decker, "he take I on a high mountain,
show I the Kingdoms of the Earth.">

Basically, if I want to shine at Boeing, I'm not going to lay a chain
of relays through Picadilly Circus - the traffic's disgusting. To run
on Boeing's computers, I'm going to have to go through their private
nodes. And of course, they're not going to let their industrial
secrets pass though public gridspace.

Note that this entails that A-X can keep those 6 Ghz links open
for me even when Boeing's processors are on the other side of the
world. That's expensive, and my A-X account would go through the
roof if I really kept a memory-update relay running through all
those intermediate nodes. But once I'm inside Boeing's private
space, they pay for it.

<"You pay for it?" "Mon, I just talk sweetly and it come down from
the tree.">

You cowboys, it's a different story. Cowboys mostly cruise: you access
a lot of nodes, but you make low demands on each one as you pass.
When you cruise, all you're doing is swapping one grid-view process
for another, and GridView is so cheap nobody monitors it. It's
just nodes passing activity statistics to each other, so you can
sit in one and get a rough picture of the others. A million nodes,
updated once a second - a few MHz, small change.

Now, some other cowboy hits on you, you're in trouble. Suddenly you're
sharing space with this really possessive process which monopolizes
the local processor, slows you down, and plays CoreWar all over local
address space. (Your processor, A-X's and your opponent's are very
tightly coupled when you're sharing a point - no way all that bandwidth
could be maintained through indirect channels.) Your only chance to
keep security is to relinquish all processes except those occupying
your very own core, in which case you might as well log out. Unless
your processor is faster than his, of course, or you're running a
heavy virus protect.

<Yawns. They know all that... >

One of the reasons the Fission Authority Pyramid is such a
monster in the matrix is, not that they communicate with the world
all that much, or even that they process madly, but simply so that
they can keep a lot of grid between them and the streets. From where
they stand, they need to get out, but equally they need to make
very sure that nobody gets in without being validated byte by byte
as one of their own. Now remember that their carrier won't couple
anybody to their space except on a move-to-adjacent basis. So
interlopers have to come through the walls - and they have to have
enough power to swap their heavy can-openers from node to node fast.
So the wall nodes are devoted to rigorous active security (more
CoreWar) of a kind that would slow any real communication down
to object-oriented morse.

So why don't they just ask A-X to suspend the adjacent-access rule
for their wall-points, so that callers can only get through the
front door? Answer: because as soon as A-X makes an exception for
Fission Authority, A-X's programs, world-wide, are going to need
special code to check whether nodes belong to Fission Authority.
But no way are A-X going to re-burn their ROM. Nobody hacks A-X.
If Fission wants to be very big and very secure, they'll have to
invest in a lot of CoreWar.

OK, that's about the story. What the convention of the matrix gives
us is a way for anybody to tightly couple machines with anybody
else, instantly, on a free-market basis. So everybody can have
videophones. So banks can have secure communications. So that the
whole Japanese population doen't have to live in Tokyo.  So that
telepresence can be a general mode of employment. So that everybody's
PC can be a Cray for 45 minutes. Etc.

	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*

Arguments break out. "You think the banks are secure? Man that's the
biggest load..." "What's a cray?" "But the whole Japanese population
does live in Tokyo!" "Yeah but then we moved to San Francisco." "What's
CoreWar?" "Oldie mean Heapo Bumpo, beanbrain." "God, who does Heapo
Bumpo any more? Frame slipping, that's the chic technique..."

The oldie smiles, and goes back to his ruminations. Let's see, if there
are 24 permutations of the courtcards in a given suit, and 24 of the
suits themselves, and if we let the Mill in Flames force a rebid for
the Trumps... with a Home Ground advantage of 30 milliseconds, that
means White can do a prediction of the next three cards while Black's
still clearing the downlink to Seattle. Oh boy. Now how do I fit a
three-level tree in the kernel? Hmm, not easy...


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Jonathan Burns        |
burns@latcs1.lat.oz.au| They are dangerous, Max, because they have what
Computer Science Dept | you don't, a philosophy.
La Trobe University   |                           -Videodrome
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