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Q&A

Which current networking protocol would be the optimal choice for very small FTL bandwidth?

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Possibly a dumb and outsider question, but my knowledge in the basics of computer networks is terrible.

Imagine the possibly not too original concept, that humanity somehow manages to transmit data instantaneously, defeating the vast distances of space - however, it is possible for very small data packets only.

Now make it a bit more specific: the transmitter and the receiver are the same machine, so if two such machines are deployed, contact between them can happen instantaneously and without any loss, but the speed itself is slow - let's say, being able to send 5 to 10 bytes (10 to 20 hexadecimal codes) per second.

Does it differ from the early days of the internet - in another sense, would it be possible to handle with any protocols ever developed in the field of computer networks?

If no, what makes it impossible to handle?

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This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/61547. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

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Does it differ from the early days of the internet - in another sense, would it be possible to handle with any protocols ever developed in the field of computer networks?

No, that's not possible, on a fundamental level.

A protocol is a set of rules defining how one thing communicates with another thing in a standardised way. That can be two parts of an application on the same computer (for example, one part of my app sends data to another part by saving JSON to a file), or it can be two wildly different machines in different corners of the globe (for example, I here in the UK can send an email to my friends in New Zealand because someone defined POP and SMTP - some email protocols).

Fundamentally, you cannot engage in any form of communication with anything unless you have a defined protocol. That doesn't have to be a written-down, RFC-numbered, IETF-approved, MDN-documented Protocol protocol, but it's still a protocol.

So: no, you must define a networking protocol before your computers can communicate with one another.

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