In Sindome, many objects are interconnected via a networking layer that's exposed to players outside of the Grid. This lower level networking system connects security devices, robots, intercoms, and more together so that they can communicate. Like the Grid, all of these interactions are wireless.
To get an understanding of how networking works, there are a few concepts to be aware of:
A NETWORK
Is a collection of devices in a tree hierarchy. You can broadly think of a network-enabled object as belonging to one of two categories: A hub, or a device.
Devices connect to hubs and serve a purpose, like a microphone, robot, or a camera. They can only connect to one thing, and they send all of their data to the hub they are connected to.
Hubs receive many connections, and can connect to other hubs. Hubs have a hard limit of the number of connections they're capable of having, but a quick way to get around that is by connecting a hub to another hub so that more connections can be made. When a hub goes offline, all of its connected devices also go offline, so in addition to giving more connections, it can also be useful to segregate networks over multiple hubs to prevent total network failures.
In addition, a network has some exacting details that make it important to note. Every network has a unique ID (think of a MAC Address), that differentiates its traffic among the traffic of many other networks. The network ID is fairly hard to read so it is possible to also alias an entire network to make it more human readable using tools found in game.
NETWORKING NETWORKS
So what happens when trying to connect a hub with many devices to another hub that similarly has many devices? Instead of directly connecting these two separate networks, the hub will present an option. Merge the networks or bridge them.
Merging networks directly connects the hub, making all traffic between all devices available through the whole network. This works great when building out a robust network that is quite large, but isn't always what may be desired.
Bridging networks will not merge the networks, but instead create a one way link where all traffic from one hub is sent unidirectionally to a secondary hub. Either hub may terminate this bridge at any time, but only the source hub can establish the initial bridge.
MONITOR TUNING
Monitors, screens, and more litter the world and are the viewing glass by which most networks are interacted with at a higher level. By default, a networked monitor will display nothing. Using the 'tune' command, it is possible to configure monitors to display feeds of your choice.
Once a monitor has been tuned, look at it to view the current feeds.
ADDITIONAL FUNCTIONALITY
There are many other functions present in networks, some of which is included here. To access these functions, additional tools must be found and acquired in game.
SEE ALSO: help look *Last Updated: 01/24/22 by MirageGM*
