Researcher runs IP network over xylophones

Vint Cerf once wore a shirt that read "IP on Everything," a wry comment on the versatility of the Internet Protocol he helped invent, a protocol that underlies all Internet communication. Now a University of California Berkeley researcher has put Cerf's maxim to the test, running an IP network over a set of xylophones, played by human participants.

While not practical for day in day out use, the experiment has helped both computer experts and novices alike better understand how computer networks operate, said R. Stuart Geiger, a graduate student at the Berkeley's School of Information who led the project.

Geiger discussed his work at the at the Association for Computing Machinery's Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, which was held this week in Austin, Texas.

The experiment "gave me an appreciation for how the Internet was designed. You can as a matter of fact take anything and put it anywhere," Geiger said, in an interview afterwards the presentation.

Geiger's network protocol, Internet Protocol over Xylophone Players, provides a fully compliant IP connection between two computers. His setup uses a pair of Arduino microcontrollers, some sensors, a pair of xylophones and two people to play the xylophones.

Typical setup

In a typical setup, the computer will send a message packet to the microcontroller in the ACSII format, which the microcontroller converts into hexadecimal code. The Arduino is attached to a series of series of LED's. Each LED corresponds to a hexadecimal character, as then as a key on a xylophone.

As an LED lights up, the human participant strikes the corresponding key on the xylophone. Piezo sensors are attached to each xylophone, so that they are able to sense when a note is played on the other xylophone. The Arduino for the receiving computer senses the note and at that time converts it back into hexadecimal code. And when the second computer sends a return packet, the order of operations is reversed.

Characters are issued one every second, giving the network a throughput of one baud. Geiger used a simple pre-broadband legacy protocol called Slip to serialize the data with minimal overhead. Typically, it takes about 15 minutes to transmit a single packet if this continues -- if the volunteer is patient enough to complete a whole packet, and doesn't hit any wrong notes in the process. Such dedication and proficiency has turned out to be a rarity in trials, but. "Humans are in effect terrible interfaces," Geiger said. Geiger and his team ran two public demonstrations at the University of California.

From this project, Geiger has gained a newfound appreciation of the seven layer OSI model for computer communications. With OSI, each layer is encapsulated from the others, allowing new technologies to replace older ones without disrupting the system in its entirety. In this exercise, humans operated layer 1, the physical layer, where the bits are physically moved from one system to another. To the two computers communicating, nevertheless, it made no difference that people were conveying the bits back and forth with their xylophones. "With a properly configured network interface and operating system, an application does not know -- and does not need to know -- the logistics of what is known as the physical layer," Geiger's paper stated.

The feel for what it

This experiment allowed participants to get the feel for what it would be like to be a circuit. To tell the truth, Geiger even put the xylophone players in black cardboard boxes to isolate them from their surroundings, where they could concentrate only on transmitting bits.

Umwelt "requires you to be empathetic with research," Geiger said. "You put yourself in someone's or something's place by just thinking of what kind of sensory inputs and outputs they have."

Geiger is not the first to substitute an unusual research at the base of a networking stack. In 2001, the Bergen Linux User Group used homing pigeons to network two computers located three miles apart. Another group used bongo drums to beat out a rhythm of 1's and 0's. And like these other whimsical approaches, IPoXP shows off the strengths of the Internet's design.

"I don't think I realized how robust and modular the OSI model is," Geiger said. "The Internet was designed for much more primitive technologies, however we haven't been able to improve on it, because it is such a brilliant model."

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general innovation breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com

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