
The Independent Discovery of TCP/IP, by Ants - pknerd
http://priceonomics.com/the-independent-discovery-of-tcpip-by-ants/
======
hyperpallium
Article is about rate adjusting, not packets.

\Theory We can only perceive nature's algorithms after we've worked them out
for ourselves, because we don't know what to look for in the noise. Therefore,
we are surrounded by incredibly clever algorithms, unbeknownst.

~~~
Someone
Also, I would write _by humans_ , not _by ants_.

One could also have a deep philosophical discussion whether ants actually can
discover anything (how much consciousness/ability to abstract/... is needed
for that, and do ants posses it? Or maybe, do ants lack it, but ant colonies
have it? Or is it DNA that discovered it using a genetic search algorithm?)

~~~
EGreg
Have you heard of the China Brain thought experiment?

~~~
pacaro
I assume you are referring to Searle's "Chinese Room" [1] thought experiment

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room)

~~~
EGreg
No, China Brain. It is more analogous here.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_brain](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_brain)

~~~
dTal
It's interesting that both "thought experiments" take essentially the same
form - layer a fully working consciousness (defined either by being able to
pass the Turing test or by actually emulating a brain on the physical level)
onto a bizarre and improbable substrate that, strictly speaking, is too small
to contain it; then gawp at the improbability of the arrangement you've
constructed.

Dennett has a good rebuttal to this whole class - he notes that is not at all
intuitive that a _brain_ should be conscious. Open up someone's skull and look
at the pulsing meat, and try and convince yourself that there's a mental
universe in there. You may as well say "it's just stupid atoms bumping around
- how could that be conscious?"

You either believe in a) supernatural souls, b) the mystical consciousness-
granting power of meat, or c) minds are independent of their substrate.

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EGreg
I think a and c could be the same. Why not believe it?

~~~
dTal
Yeah I thought that as I was typing it, but I was procrastinating and didn't
have time to fully flesh it out so I hit submit anyway!

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alblue
Discovery of TCP/IP is a significant overstatement. The ants perform flow
control based on the number and frequency of ants returning from a known
source.

They of course have no concept of out-of-order delivery, retransmitting lost
ants or even having to deal with ants accidentally duplicated as they walk
their paths.

~~~
enibundo
> retransmitting lost ants

That's not an issue to ants and their problem.

~~~
stevejones
Actually it is. The article seems to describe an algorithm with a catastrophic
failure mode where no (or not enough) ants return. Without retransmission the
ants just hang around waiting for a returning ant. So there must be some sort
of retransmission.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
With no retransmission you limit the number of dead ants though. If you
continue to send ants you're going to get lots of dead ants in certain
situations, so you'd need a more complex algorithm than simple retransmission.

------
jlg23
Interesting on one hand, nothing new on the other.

Complexity through a few iterations of a very simple algorithm is one of the
corner stones of Stephen Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science"[1] and has
independently been proven feasible by VPRI's "STEPS" project [2].

I had to google (again) for documentation on STEPS and it's not the document I
was looking for, but one of the for me astonishing insights was that correct
text flow in typesetting is just a special case of a cellular automaton. If
anyone finds the document that highlights this, I'd be grateful for a link.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science)

[2]
[http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2012001_steps.pdf](http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2012001_steps.pdf)

~~~
signa11
> If anyone finds the document that highlights this, I'd be grateful for a
> link.

probably this one :
[http://www.vpri.org/pdf/m2010002_lobjects.pdf](http://www.vpri.org/pdf/m2010002_lobjects.pdf)
?

~~~
jlg23
Not the one I meant, but still interesting. Thanks :)

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cLeEOGPw
Comparison with TCP is forced. What ants actually do is regulate how many
workers to send based on how quickly they return. TCP does this, but also much
more.

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shacharz
Even just looking at the flow & congestion control by it self, it's not
similar to TCP. Or at least the article didn't go into details. How does the
decrement and increment of the rate is being done. In TCP we have the
congestion window. Which is increasing and decreasing as a function of the
state of the algorithm (slow start, congestion avoidance) and the occurrence
of packet-loss or perceived packet-loss by the algorithm. In the article it's
not clear how Ants are adjusting the amount of ants out there.

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elcapitan
I thought ants discovered how to build java applications?

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Angostura
BT Labs at Martlesham and Prof Peter Cochrane was exploring packet routing
based on similarities to ant colonies back in 1994.

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sklogic
It is the other way around. IP routing was inspired by the emergent behaviour
of the ant farms.

~~~
umanwizard
Regardless of whether that's true, this article is talking about flow control,
not routing.

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rplst8
Wouldn't the technical term for this be "End-to-end congestion control" and
transmit window adjustment, instead of "TCP/IP"?

~~~
VLM
Kermit supported sliding windows, not x/y/zmodem. Best technology analogy is
probably:

[http://www.kermitproject.org/](http://www.kermitproject.org/)

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mpitt
> This article was first published on February 3, 2015

Ah! I thought I had seen it on HN before... :)

~~~
CarolineW
The story has been submitted many times:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=TCP%20Ants&sort=byDate&dateRan...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=TCP%20Ants&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)

No previous submission have generated any discussion, or garnered many points.

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known
Useful when you're lost in a Jungle ;)

