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AbidaNet LLC has a patent pending that describes the construction of networks with the following characteristics:

  • hundreds or even thousands of stations sharing a common medium without the need for switches and hubs with their associated cost and latencies
  • bandwidth utilization is limited only by the propagation delays across the medium
  • new nodes being added to the network quickly and with minimal interference with existing data traffic
  • ad hoc networks being formed and their bandwidth managed efficiently
  • because the network is self-aware, administrators having access at any station to the state and health of the network without interfering with existing data traffic, and
  • unauthorized stations attempting to join the network being immediately identified and physically located from the data acquired by existing authorized stations

The target of the company's efforts is the most difficult, and therefore the most neglected, arena of communications. This area goes by a number of names in different industries:

  • Interconnectivity: ensuring that all sensors, displays and control centers in a complex command and control environment establish and maintain communications
  • Wiring a building: ensuring that there is effective, high-speed network access at every desk on every floor of the building
  • The last mile: connecting remote devices, soldiers or vehicles on the front lines to their communications center
  • From the end of the street to the house: the copper connection from the box at the end of the street to each house

These problems all have common components:

  • the need to effectively utilize the bandwidth available on whatever communication medium is employed
  • the need for new nodes to be added to the network quickly and with minimal interference with existing data traffic
  • the need for administrators to determine the state and health of the network without interfering with existing data traffic
  • the need to prevent unauthorized access to the network

The typical solution to most of these problems has been an implementation of the IEEE 802.3 standard usually referred to as "Ethernet." The Ethernet protocol has been developed and refined since its invention in 1973. However, its fundamental flaws remain:

  • Networks cannot ever successfully use more than 30% of the available bandwidth.
  • Due to the layers of switches, network latencies are usually unacceptable
  • There is no effective, non-intrusive administrative access to the network health or status, and
  • There is no effective means of preventing unauthorized access.

When network frequencies rise above the historical 100Mbps, other issues with the Ethernet protocol make sharing media completely impractical. Networks at 1Gbps and above revert to point-to-point connections between each station and a hub or switch. A complex collection of hubs and switches then provide the connectivity between stations on a local network, and to the outside world.

The network performance is then limited not by the media to the stations, but by the performance of the hubs and switches. Networking companies are then in the business of selling newer, better, faster hubs and switches attempting to minimize the performance problems they introduce.