Mesh Computing and Tootsville

Here's the thing: We are doing big things, “on the cheap.”

We don't have a budget, we don't have any income, and we don't have any paid staff. That means every time someone hits our servers, well, that's donation dollars being burned up.

Now, I, for one, love this project and I'm willing to throw a little money its way, and I'm sure there will be a few others willing to stand up and toss a dollar in the hat, too, now and then. But the biggest risk we face is hitting the limits of our financially-accessible resources.

What that translates to in real-world terms, is this: the less work those servers have to do, the more money it costs us, and if the number of users exceeds our financial ability to support them, we'll have to choose between turning people away or degrading the quality of service for everyone. Neither one of those sounds like a great idea to me.

The solution is what we're generally calling “Mesh Computing.” Rather that make the central servers do all the work, we're handing off as much of it as is possible to players' computers. Nifty, right?

From a cynical point of view, you might look at it like this: in return for a free game, you have to donate some computer power to help out.

This comes into play in basically three areas:

• Gossipnet
• Asset Distribution
• Direct Conferencing