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Ripple: A wireless token-passing protocol for multi-hop wireless mesh networks

72 points by based2 6y ago

retSava 6y ago
Not to be confused with the routing protocol for wireless mesh networks RPL, https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6550 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6550
- ben_bai 6y ago
  Not to be confused with Ripple (payment protocol) invented by Ripple (Ripple Labs, Inc.) which trades Ripple (XRP).
  - ollie87 6y ago
    Not to be confused by Ripple, a Galaxy-branded chocolate bar made my Mars.
    - nobrains 6y ago
      Not to be confused with ripple, the original: a small propagating wave.
      - kthejoker2 6y ago
        Not to be confused with ripple, the obsolete: a variant verb of rip meaning to crease or ruffle.
        myself248 6y ago
        Not to be confused with Ripple, a fortified wine cooler sold by Ernest & Julio Gallo, and made famous by Sanford & Son.
        buu700 6y ago
        Not to be confused with Ripple (波紋 Hamon), an energy used in the ancient form of martial arts Sendō (仙道, literally "Way of The Hermit/Wizard").
  - jancsika 6y ago
    > Not to be confused with Ripple (payment protocol) invented by Ripple (Ripple Labs, Inc.) which trades Ripple (XRP). And I'm pretty sure they paid Ryan Fugger for the name Ripple, which originally applied to his burgeoning, hippy-dippy decentralized payment system that did not require a blockchain. I can't think of a better example of Silicon Valley's famous "disruption" than that: 1. Dude starts building some software to make it more convenient for close-knit communities of people to share goods and services with each other. In other words-- a good faith effort from a dev to add some digital convenience to happy little sharing economies. 2. Some people riding the blockchain bullshit train see value in the name "Ripple" and image associated with that name 3. Said people buy that name from Ryan 4. Original spirit of Ripple is lost to history, and a long, boring drama over preseeded coins, what "decentralization" actually means, whether it really applies to XRP, positioning as the international payment system against every other blockchain idiot trying to do the same, etc. In other words-- we go from this: "Hm, I wonder if graph theory can be used to reinforce local economies" To this: "There's gold in them there transnational borders, boys! Yeeeha!"
    - thelastwave 6y ago
      "hippy dippy" ?
  - kstrauser 6y ago
    ...which is featured on the front page of Hacker News right now, literally right above this story, regarding a pending SEC lawsuit.
colesantiago 6y ago
naming is hard
- garmaine 6y ago
  How about the eXtensible Routing Protocol, or XRP?
  - reedf1 6y ago
    I've heard the leader of this research broke off and created a competing technology - eXtensible Message Routing, or XMR.
    - garmaine 6y ago
      That’s a stellar protocol, if I do say so myself.
- Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
  Maybe the words are running out?
  - ignoramous 6y ago
    Likely zipf distribution at play: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/fCn8zs912OE https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/fCn8zs912OE
- RpFLCL 6y ago
  There are 2 hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-1 errors.
  - infogulch 6y ago
    I'm just glad that someone delivered this joke correctly for once.
- tyingq 6y ago
gonzo 6y ago
Ken Biba (long ago CEO of Xircom) wanted a token passing mechanism for 802.11
lathiat 6y ago
Back in the early 2000s the community wireless network in Perth Australia “WAFreeNet” made a token passing system for WiFi to solve the hidden node problem (obviously not for mesh networks like this): http://frottle.sourceforge.net/ http://frottle.sourceforge.net/ My favourite quote which can still be found in the slashdot comments “ There was nothing new about the concept - polled systems and token rings are common knowledge in communications and networking. It wasnt difficult - it only took me a weekend, and that included the time spent learning perl (it was my first go). It was even operating at the wrong layer - using UDP control messages to schedule IP traffic. Regardless of all it's limitations, it worked, so I got the other WAFreenet members involved with testing and development.”
uhhyeahdude 6y ago
This thread is SEO for $COIN
garphunkle 6y ago
My attempt at a summary: Ripple refers to "spatial-reuse": a phenomenon where a train of packets spread from an originator uninterrupted. With Ripple, nodes can only transmit DATA when they have received the "talking stick" (token) from the upstream originator. A downstream node can request a token with the new MAC frame: ready-to-receive. With their simulation, a node is always in either a TX, RX, or Listen state with equal proportions, so you have 1/3rd spatial-reuse. This solves a problem in 802.11 where physical layer collision avoidance is sub-optimal for link utilization. Other protocols I am familiar with solve this with beacons to synchronize guaranteed time slots (a mode of IEEE 802.15.4), or they adopt a similar RTS/CTS scheme which can suffer from the hidden node problem. What I cannot picture in my own head is how a packet can swim upstream: this protocol has a strong notion of upstream/downstream.
egberts1 6y ago
Token Ring, redux?
theboat 6y ago
I once thought community-based mesh networking could disrupt last-mile internet providers, beyond its obvious value in remote areas and disaster zones. If we could get decent bandwidth with a freemium/pay-as-you-go model, it would be way more consumer friendly and affordable than paying a big telco to string a wire into your house. However with the advent of 5G and now satellite internet, it seems like high-speed wireless internet will be ubiquitous in relatively short order without the need for mesh networks. So that dream is probably dead.

72 points by based2 6y ago

Not to be confused with the routing protocol for wireless mesh networks RPL, https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6550 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6550

ben_bai 6y ago
Not to be confused with Ripple (payment protocol) invented by Ripple (Ripple Labs, Inc.) which trades Ripple (XRP).
- ollie87 6y ago
  Not to be confused by Ripple, a Galaxy-branded chocolate bar made my Mars.
  - nobrains 6y ago
    Not to be confused with ripple, the original: a small propagating wave.
    - kthejoker2 6y ago
      Not to be confused with ripple, the obsolete: a variant verb of rip meaning to crease or ruffle.
      - myself248 6y ago
        Not to be confused with Ripple, a fortified wine cooler sold by Ernest & Julio Gallo, and made famous by Sanford & Son.
        buu700 6y ago
        Not to be confused with Ripple (波紋 Hamon), an energy used in the ancient form of martial arts Sendō (仙道, literally "Way of The Hermit/Wizard").
- jancsika 6y ago
  > Not to be confused with Ripple (payment protocol) invented by Ripple (Ripple Labs, Inc.) which trades Ripple (XRP). And I'm pretty sure they paid Ryan Fugger for the name Ripple, which originally applied to his burgeoning, hippy-dippy decentralized payment system that did not require a blockchain. I can't think of a better example of Silicon Valley's famous "disruption" than that: 1. Dude starts building some software to make it more convenient for close-knit communities of people to share goods and services with each other. In other words-- a good faith effort from a dev to add some digital convenience to happy little sharing economies. 2. Some people riding the blockchain bullshit train see value in the name "Ripple" and image associated with that name 3. Said people buy that name from Ryan 4. Original spirit of Ripple is lost to history, and a long, boring drama over preseeded coins, what "decentralization" actually means, whether it really applies to XRP, positioning as the international payment system against every other blockchain idiot trying to do the same, etc. In other words-- we go from this: "Hm, I wonder if graph theory can be used to reinforce local economies" To this: "There's gold in them there transnational borders, boys! Yeeeha!"
  - thelastwave 6y ago
    "hippy dippy" ?
- kstrauser 6y ago
  ...which is featured on the front page of Hacker News right now, literally right above this story, regarding a pending SEC lawsuit.

colesantiago 6y ago

naming is hard

garmaine 6y ago
How about the eXtensible Routing Protocol, or XRP?
- reedf1 6y ago
  I've heard the leader of this research broke off and created a competing technology - eXtensible Message Routing, or XMR.
  - garmaine 6y ago
    That’s a stellar protocol, if I do say so myself.
Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
Maybe the words are running out?
- ignoramous 6y ago
  Likely zipf distribution at play: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/fCn8zs912OE https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/fCn8zs912OE
RpFLCL 6y ago
There are 2 hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-1 errors.
- infogulch 6y ago
  I'm just glad that someone delivered this joke correctly for once.
tyingq 6y ago

gonzo 6y ago

Ken Biba (long ago CEO of Xircom) wanted a token passing mechanism for 802.11

lathiat 6y ago

Back in the early 2000s the community wireless network in Perth Australia “WAFreeNet” made a token passing system for WiFi to solve the hidden node problem (obviously not for mesh networks like this): http://frottle.sourceforge.net/ http://frottle.sourceforge.net/ My favourite quote which can still be found in the slashdot comments “ There was nothing new about the concept - polled systems and token rings are common knowledge in communications and networking. It wasnt difficult - it only took me a weekend, and that included the time spent learning perl (it was my first go). It was even operating at the wrong layer - using UDP control messages to schedule IP traffic. Regardless of all it's limitations, it worked, so I got the other WAFreenet members involved with testing and development.”

uhhyeahdude 6y ago

This thread is SEO for $COIN

garphunkle 6y ago

My attempt at a summary: Ripple refers to "spatial-reuse": a phenomenon where a train of packets spread from an originator uninterrupted. With Ripple, nodes can only transmit DATA when they have received the "talking stick" (token) from the upstream originator. A downstream node can request a token with the new MAC frame: ready-to-receive. With their simulation, a node is always in either a TX, RX, or Listen state with equal proportions, so you have 1/3rd spatial-reuse. This solves a problem in 802.11 where physical layer collision avoidance is sub-optimal for link utilization. Other protocols I am familiar with solve this with beacons to synchronize guaranteed time slots (a mode of IEEE 802.15.4), or they adopt a similar RTS/CTS scheme which can suffer from the hidden node problem. What I cannot picture in my own head is how a packet can swim upstream: this protocol has a strong notion of upstream/downstream.

egberts1 6y ago

Token Ring, redux?

theboat 6y ago

I once thought community-based mesh networking could disrupt last-mile internet providers, beyond its obvious value in remote areas and disaster zones. If we could get decent bandwidth with a freemium/pay-as-you-go model, it would be way more consumer friendly and affordable than paying a big telco to string a wire into your house. However with the advent of 5G and now satellite internet, it seems like high-speed wireless internet will be ubiquitous in relatively short order without the need for mesh networks. So that dream is probably dead.