Chapter 1017: Confused Military Communication Station
"Find the way and forward?" No one, including the comrades in the army, quite understood the meaning of this sentence.

Although the comrades in the army knew that this communication system encountered forwarding difficulties during use, they were not clear where the problem lay.

"Yes, forwarding by pathfinding." The comrade from the Military Communications Institute nodded and gave an example: "Take forwarding through a relay station as an example. Currently, forwarding through a regenerative relay station can only be done through indiscriminate reception and broadcasting. If the forwarding information is less, it is fine. If the forwarding relay station has a little more of the above two data, let alone other things, each communication terminal will be stretched just to receive the broadcast information. Moreover, there is a biggest problem with this method..."

"what is the problem?"

"Forwarding can only be done once. If the forwarding level is greater than 2, data backhaul may occur. The same data is repeatedly forwarded between two regeneration relay stations, completely occupying the channels of the regeneration relay stations on both sides."

Figuratively speaking, if a person is required to repeat whatever he hears, then two people sitting next to each other may repeat the same sentence over and over again. Because data has no directionality, what they hear from the side is most likely the sentence they told someone else not long ago.

This is the case with broadcast network forwarding. If it is not controlled, it can easily cause a data storm in the communication network.

After hearing this, the other comrades realized that this problem was really troublesome, but the other comrades were not stupid, and they quickly thought of a solution.

"Would it be better if we wrote the recipient in the data?"

"It's useless. This won't make the regeneration relay station realize that it has already forwarded the message, because it only has the destination data. You think this method is useful because you have used it in voice communications or manually intervened communication networks, but you have overlooked a problem."

"What's the problem?" The comrades in the army were very curious. Why didn't their comrades notice it during the communication process?
"That is, in this type of communication, when there are not many levels, the communication personnel know where to forward the data, and they also know what data they have just forwarded and will automatically ignore the received broadcast messages. In addition, we already have a communication call mechanism to deal with conflicts and duplications in manual communication. However, this condition does not exist for automatic communication equipment."

When people get used to their environment, there are many details they are not aware of.

Just as everyone was gradually realizing the seriousness of the problem from his abstract description, a comrade from the Military Communications Institute said, "We have tried to add path and waypoint information to the data packet, but this method can only solve the surface problem and is not enough for device networking. Moreover, when the forwarding level increases, the situation will continue to deteriorate, and the data packet overhead is extremely high."

This is equivalent to writing a letter. The address column not only has the recipient's address, but also adds every city passed by, every intersection, and even left and right turns.

This will allow the letter to be delivered, but the address bar may be much longer than the letter itself, and no one would write a letter this way.

The reason why we only need to write the recipient's final address when writing a letter is actually because the postal or logistics system helps to process and hide this information.

A comrade from the Military Communications Institute added: "In fact, the problems we encounter are far more than these. There are many problems that we cannot even summarize and describe in words..."

The comrades then realized that the real problem was something that no one had even seen yet.

If problems that can be explained clearly can still be discussed and solved, then problems that cannot be explained clearly will be difficult to deal with.

At this time, they heard Gao Zhendong speak: "Comrade, I have a few questions, please answer them."

He finally spoke. The comrade from the Military Communications Institute even had a feeling of being eagerly looking forward to it. He started to speak now, and it seemed that he already had his own ideas and just wanted to confirm the details.

The other comrades were also somewhat delighted. After all, this was the person who invented the programmable switching system. There should be no one present who was more familiar with the communication network than him.

The program-controlled switch is actually a self-organizing network device to some extent, and has a lot in common with the problems encountered by the comrades in the Military Communications Institute. They all know how useful the program-controlled switches that have been gradually deployed in the military are.

However, the switch is too large. It is undoubtedly difficult to use it for mobile communications and relay nodes of the troops.

They were all very curious about what Gao Zhendong would think about this matter. As for the comrades from the Military Communications Institute, they were even happier: "Okay, Mr. Gao, you ask."

Gao Zhendong began to ask questions, which was actually guiding the comrades of the Military Communications Institute to think: "You want a communications network that can be freely organized and expanded, right?"

Without resolving the problems of the basic network, all the automatic data distribution and automated command are nonsense. At most, we can increase the level of data forwarding by a few more levels, but this is still far from the requirements of automated command. Even automatic data distribution under complex conditions is difficult.

Gao Zhendong had developed a dedicated sparse routing device. In fact, the current method used by the comrades of the Military Communication Institute is this type of equipment, but this type of equipment also has great defects. It is highly efficient, but has limited networking capabilities and is useless for large networks. "Well, that's what I mean. During combat, the number of communication nodes and the structure of the network may change at any time, especially communication terminals, which are not as relatively fixed as relay nodes." The comrades of the Military Communication Institute felt a little clearer.

"In this network, everyone has their own unique identity, and the requirements are fixed?"

"Yes."

"Your communication nodes may use different types of channels. For example, they may be connected to wired and wireless networks at the same time. Data may come in through wired channels and go out through wireless channels?"

"Yes, yes, yes, this kind of hybrid networking is also a headache for us." Teacher Gao really speaks to our hearts.

Gao Zhendong's smile became more obvious: "What you are facing is not just a small front-line command. What you want to include is a super-large network that includes at least the campaign level, or even the entire military region, all arms, and the entire army?"

After hearing what Gao Zhendong said, the comrades working in the Military Communications Institute suddenly understood. No wonder they always felt uncomfortable: "Yes! Teacher Gao, you are right. What we have in mind is such a large command system, but now we are facing, have experience, and can give examples, but we only have a little bit of front-line command. No wonder it always feels weird."

Comrades from the Defense Working Committee and the army were shocked when they heard this. You have such far-reaching and big ideas, but your experience is so little. The content that can be used for research and improvement is at too low a level. No wonder you can't hit the point.

It has to be Comrade Gao Zhendong. No wonder he just said that solving channel conflict and blockage is just a small matter. It turns out that the big thing is here.

For a moment, they were all a little worried. It was such a big deal, and your Military Communications Institute might not even have solved it, but do you have any ideas?

However, when they saw the smile on Gao Zhendong's face, they put their worries to rest.

He can smile so brightly, which means he at least has some ideas.

As expected, Gao Zhendong said, "This matter of yours is actually related to the command system, but it is also unrelated. You shouldn't put this thing in the command system. This is a network infrastructure issue, and the command system is more about software and system. I suggest you plan them separately. If you mix them together like you are doing now, it will definitely not work. The system interface is unclear, and the coupling between different levels and subsystems is too serious. It can't be done."

The comrades from the Military Communications Institute were enlightened: "Ah, yes, yes, Chief Engineer Gao, you mentioned high cohesion and low coupling in the software development book. We only thought it was a requirement for software, but we didn't expect it to work here too!"

Gao Zhendong smiled and said, "A lot of principles are actually common. There is no rule that any kind of knowledge or wisdom can only be used in a certain profession. As for your command system, I suggest you divide it into two major parts: communication network construction and command system construction. Communication is only about communication, providing low enough latency, large enough bandwidth, good enough availability and reliability. The command system is only about intelligence distribution and combat command, and don't worry about communication."

The leader of the Defense Work Committee laughed and said, "Well, I was confused just now. Now that you said this, Zhendong, I understand much more clearly. This is not just about everyone cleaning up their own mess. This is called specialization!"

"Okay, okay! Teacher Gao, then what should we think about this network system?" The comrades from the Military Communications Institute immediately came up and took advantage of Teacher Gao's presence to get more things out.

As soon as Gao Zhendong opened his mouth, they were overjoyed: "Regarding network construction, it is actually very complicated. After I developed related technologies such as email, data communication, and modems, I also did related research in my spare time and built a network model..."

The comrades automatically ignored the inhuman words such as "spare time" in Gao Zhendong's words. If they thought about it, they would be angry to death.

What they were most interested in was the network model mentioned by Gao Zhendong!

It would be easy if we have a model. With a model, we can make a physical entity based on the model. This almost solves their most troubling problem.

As for the professionalism of Gao Zhendong's network model, no one doubts it.

Unexpectedly, Gao Zhendong changed the subject and said, "But I won't talk about it now. It's too professional. Come to me later and we can talk about it. But what I can tell you now is that I still make the same suggestion. Plan and build the network in two parts - the transmission network and the switching network. The core of the former is hardware, and the core of the latter is software."

Whether it is the OSI seven-layer model or the five-layer model that is actually more commonly used, it is not appropriate to talk about it now.

(End of this chapter)