The future Internet aims to deliver the following:
- Node interoperability from anywhere
- P2P sharing and interconnectivity
- Net Neutrality aware layer
- Scalable in logarithmic and exponential growth
- Dynamic routing on border and edges
- Tokenized data transmission
- Incentivized content and participation
One project that has this vision is NKN (New Kind of Network). They are building on the foundations of Cellular Automata principles for the network layer, which is a discrete and dynamic system. NKN introduce Cellular Automata to innovate on the layers of the network stack. It addresses network decentralization from application connectivity to networking protocols. Another thing about the project is that it wants to leverage the blockchain to maximize network resource utilization and incentivize content creation, participation and expansion. It will also make use of open source distributed network architecture philosophy in development.
There will be a finite number of nodes interacting in a regular network. S represents states of nodes, where each node has a local state. The state of all nodes determines the global state. N denotes the number of nodes in network. K denotes neighbor set, i.e. which neighbor nodes are taken into account in local state transitions. f denotes a state transition function, which has a dramatic impact on the global evolution of the system.
CA = (S, N, K, f)
This considers a dynamic P2P network with N nodes. The network connections at time t can be described by an N 脳 N adjacency matrix A(t) that evolves with time. Connections between nodes can be added, removed, or altered at each time step. It uses a general Markovian rule that take both topology of the network and states of nodes into consideration such that:
A(t + 1) = f[A(t)],
S(t)] S(t + 1) = g[A(t + 1), S(t)]
S(t) is a vector representing the states of all nodes in the network at time t, f is the topology updating rule, and g is the state updating rule.
Cellular Automata models networks goal is to build a decentralized blockchain system with dynamic topology. The consensus algorithm aims to deliver low latency, high bandwidth, extremely high scalability and low cost to reach consensus.
NKN wants to build a network infrastructure that decentralizes data transmission with a solid platform for building DApps (Distributed Applications). It looks at the network layer to make it more suitable for peer-to-peer data transmission and connectivity. NKN wants to make the network layer as transparent as possible to developers so that they can concentrate more on developing applications. That makes it more ubiquitous in the long run without having to fathom the layers beneath the application. The current Internet has huge inefficiencies for providing universal connectivity and access for all information and applications. This is the problem NKN is trying to address.
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