Specification

The TCP/IP Internet has:

  • High and Unbounded Latency
  • Wasteful, Underused Links
  • Limited Node/Switch/Hop Counts (no IoT support)
  • Low Redundancy
  • A Tendency to Centralize Power
  • Choke-point Surveillance and Censorship
  • Disaster Vulnerabilities
  • Tragedy of the Commons

What follows is a proposal for a solution: A new globally-scalable network protocol with a mesh topology. Instead of being limited to traditional address-routed packets, the protocol uses source routing to set up bounded-latency isochronous streams avoiding the problem of congestive collapse. Once a stream is set up, the route is given a numeric name to support routing micro-packets (µPkt) both directions along the route. To support isochronous streams across the entire network, the framerate of every link is a power of 2 frequency relative to TCG time, this opens the door to many new scenarios that require precise relative timekeeping. Micro-transfers of Energy, which are made ‘by simple agreement’ between each neighbor along a route, are used to cover sending data across the network, avoiding the Tragedy of the Commons. Client endpoints are responsible for building up multi-path redundant link maps through the network, relying on the advertised 3D-Geohash locations of the nodes to track only a subset of nodes within a given area; providing scalability, redundancy, and wider distribution of power. The hash-based locating mechanism gives a convenient solution to distributed data storage. Contrasted with TCP/IP, the new protocol stack’s layering model provides additional options for streams, packets, safety, reliability, robustness, latency, and extensibility. Most importantly, the entire protocol was morally designed with its socioeconomic side-effects as a guide.

The underlying specification is being held privately until ethical norms for IsoGrid implementations are well-established by the community.