Its a cold, wet, Monday morning and as usual, i'm stuck in chronic traffic on my way to the office.A good number of passengers in the matatu are wearing headphones, listening to their favorite music, i presume, or maybe listening to the mundane, salacious morning talk that has become the core of the majority of today's radio breakfast programs.I consider myself lucky to have boarded a quiet vehicle so that i may meditate and focus on the day ahead and the tasks that await me .
Anyway, as i seat there gazing away at the traffic, something quite bizarre crosses my mind.I am quite curious as to what would happen if all the traffic in cyberspace would come to such a disastrous halt.What if the devices that route internet traffic would transmit data periodically, leading to a backlog (and very dissatisfied customers)?What would happen to the voice calls routed on the internet? The latency would be quite unbearable; i can imagine having to wait more than ten seconds at a time to receive a response from the other end. Fortunately, i exhale, routing protocols on the internet know how to reroute critical and time-sensitive traffic to reliable, shorter paths leading to reliable and efficient internet services.Features such as WRED (Weighted Random Early Detection) and RED have been used for many years to accomplish this.
Can the same - or similar - principles be applied to electronic systems to control traffic on our roads? Not without an insane amount of research and complexity in implementation and operationalization.What if we had early traffic warning detection systems that monitored the incoming and outgoing traffic (on a road) and warned us about traffic buildup accordingly. Through an on-board screen mounted on the dashboard of a car, the system would then advise us on the best route to follow and the problem areas to avoid. Through the use of satellite and GPS (Global Positioning System), it would be possible for a driver to avoid 'problem areas' such as Thika or Langata roads.No pun Intended.
Of course there would have to be a concomitant upgrade of the underlying infrastructure i.e. roads.For example, there have been numerous upgrades to the core infrastructure of the internet to support the phenomenal and sudden growth of computers and devices connecting to it.The routing protocols that run the internet also have 'bare minimums' without which they cannot perform.Maybe one day, an ingenious young (wo)man will invent a RIP version for avoiding traffic (RIP Hooray!); this version will not be limited to a hop count of 16!
This is definately food for thought.
I am awakened from my daydream by a makanga shouting mwisho wa gari, and i take that as my cue to disembark from the ramshackle vehicle.Its time to face the day ahead.
