“Very good, Leon. Can you tell us what they built, and why?”
Leon sighed when he realized his teacher wasn’t going to let him off easy. “According to Avogadro, it would have been too expensive and time consuming to build yet another network infrastructure comparable to what the cable and phone companies had built last century. Instead they built MeshBoxes and gave them away. A MeshBox does two things. It’s a high speed wireless access point that allows you to connect your phone or laptop to the Internet. But that’s just what Avogadro added so that people would want them. The real purpose of a MeshBox is to form a network with nearby MeshBoxes. Instead of sending data over the Internet via Comcast, the MeshBox routes the data packets over the network of MeshBoxes.”
Leon hadn’t realized it, but sometime during his speech he had stood up, and started walking towards the netboard at the front of the room. “The Mesh network is slower in some ways than the traditional Internet, but faster in other ways.” He drew on the touch-sensitive board with his finger. “It takes about nine hundred hops from one MeshBox to the next to get from New York to Los Angeles, but only about ten hops from one router to the next by Internet backbone. That’s a seven-second delay by Mesh, compared to a quarter-second by backbone.
“But the aggregate bandwidth of the Mesh in the United States is about four hundred times the bandwidth of the backbone because there are more than twenty-million MeshBoxes in the United States. More than a hundred-million around the world. That means the Mesh is bad for phone calls or interactive gaming unless you’re within about two hundred miles, but it’s great for moving files and large data sets around at any distance.”
He paused for a moment to sketch a stylized computer on the netboard. “But the real benefit of the Mesh is that it’s completely resistant to intrusion or tampering, way more so than the Internet ever was before the Mesh. If any node goes down, it can be routed around. Even if a thousand nodes go down, it’s trivial to route around them. The MeshBoxes themselves are tamperproof — Avogadro manufactured them as a monolithic block of circuitry with algorithms implemented in hardware circuits, rather than software. So no one can maliciously alter the functionality. The traffic between boxes is encrypted. Neighboring MeshBoxes exchange statistics on each other, so if someone tries to insert something into the Mesh trying to mimic a MeshBox, the neighboring MeshBoxes can compare behavior statistics and detect the wolf in sheep’s clothing. Compared to the traditional Internet structure, the Mesh is more reliable and secure.”
Leon looked up and realized he was standing in front of the class. On the netboard behind him he had drawn topology diagrams of the backbone and mesh. The entire class was staring at him. James made a “what the hell are you doing?” face from the back of the room. If he had a time travel machine, he’d go back and warn his earlier self to keep his damn mouth shut.
The teacher, on the other hand, was glowing, and had a broad smile on his lean face. “Excellent, Leon. So Avogadro was concerned about net neutrality, and created a completely neutral network infrastructure. Why do we care about this today?”
Leon tried to walk back to his desk.
“Not so fast, Leon,” the teacher called. “Why exactly is net neutrality so important to us? This isn’t a business or science class. We’re studying national governments. Why is net neutrality and net access relevant to governments?”
Leon glowered at a corner of the room and sighed in defeat. “Because in 2011, the Tunisian government was overthrown, largely due to activists who organized on the Internet. Egypt, Syria, and other countries tried to suppress activists by shutting down Internet access to prevent the uncontrolled distribution of information. The Mesh didn’t just disrupt Internet providers, it disrupted national government control over the Internet. Instead of a few dozen or less Internet connections that could be shut down by a centralized government, the Mesh network within any given country has thousands of nodes that span national borders. When governments tried to enforce wi-fi dead zones around their borders, Avogadro responded by incorporating satellite modems in the Mesh boxes so that any box, anywhere on Earth, can access Avogadro satellites when all else fails. Between Mesh boxes and WikiLeaks, it’s impossible for governments to restrict the flow of information. Transparency rules the day.”
“Exactly. Thank you, Leon, you can sit down. Class, let’s talk about transparency and government.”
Leon slumped back to his desk.
“Nice going, dork,” James called after class. “What happened to not sticking out?”
“Look, the Mesh is just cool. It’s the way nature would have evolved electronic communications. Cheap, simple, redundant, no dependency on centralization. I couldn’t help myself.”
“Yeah, well, have fun in history. Maybe you can give your class a lecture on Creative Commons.” James's tone mocked Leon, but when Leon looked up, he saw the corner’s of James mouth edging toward a smile.
“Yeah, sure,” Leon said, smiling back. James turned and left, off to another class.
Leon headed into his own class and started to settle into his chair when his phone started a high frequency shrill for an incoming message. Leon pulled it out to read the message.
Leon, this is your uncle Alex. I hope you remember me — when I was last in New York, I think you were ten. I hear from your parents that you are great computer programmer.
Leon rolled his eyes, but kept reading.
I am working on programming project here in Russia, and I could use your help. I have unusual job that your parents don’t know about. I write viruses for group here in Russia. They pay very good money.
Leon leaned forward, paying very close attention to the email now. Writing viruses for a group in Russia could only be the Russian mob and their infamous botnet.
I run into some problems. Anti-virus software manufacturers put out very good updates to their software. Virus writers and anti-virus writers have been engaged in arms race for years. But suddenly anti-virus writers have gotten very, very good. No viruses I write in last few months can defeat anti-virus software.
You realize now I talking about running botnet. Because of anti-virus software, botnet shrinking in size, and will soon be too small to be effective.
Unfortunately, although pay is very good, you must realize, men I work for are very dangerous. They are unhappy that
“Leon. Are. You. Paying. Attention?”
Leon looked up abruptly. The whole class was staring at him.
“Can you tell us why the colonies declared independence from Great Britain?”
Leon just stared at the teacher. She was talking, but the words seemed to be coming from far away. What was she babbling about?
The teacher went over to her desk. “Mr. Tsarev, will you please pay attention?” It was not a question.
Leon just nodded dumbly, waited until she turned his back, then went back to the email.
They are unhappy that botnet is shrinking and give me two weeks to release new virus to expand botnet. Nothing I try has worked. I have one week left, and I am afraid they will
“Mr. Tsarev.” Leon looked up, to find her now looming over him. “Do I need to take your phone away?”
“But how would I take notes?” Leon asked in his best innocent voice.
“That might be an issue if you were actually listening, but since you are not, I think taking notes is the least of your worries.” She walked back up to the front of the room, keeping an eye on Leon the whole time. In fact, she didn’t glance away from Leon for the entire remainder of the class.
As soon as Leon could get out of the classroom, he headed over to the corner of the hallway to finish reading the message.