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TECHNOLOGY Monday 7 august 2017

Creating a high-speed internet lane for emergency situations

(THE CONVERSATION) Dur- existing internet connec- But when it fails, there can try to coordinate rush hour have created a new traf-
ing large disasters, like hur- tions, while giving priority to be long delays in commu- around a major bottle- fic control system tailored
ricanes, wildfires and ter- rescue workers’ data. nications. In fact, on aver- neck. The process takes at specifically to emergency
rorist attacks, people want Connecting networks age, 150 seconds (two and least several minutes, and response networks. It runs
emergency responders At the moment, it’s reason- a half minutes) can go by sometimes several hours. without affecting other
to arrive quickly and help ably common for commu- before a failure is identi- Until then, data in tran- protocols on the internet.
people deal with the crisis. nication networks to be- fied. In that time, the data sit can be delayed or lost We call it the multi-node
In order to do their best, come overloaded when label routing protocol.
police, medics, firefighters disaster strikes. When lots Rather than requiring ev-
and those who manage of people try to make cell- ery router to keep track of
them need lots of informa- phone calls or use mobile the best directions to every
tion: Who is located where, data, the networks get other one, we divide pos-
needing what help? And too busy for calls to con- sible routes for internet traf-
what equipment and nect and messages to go fic into hierarchies. These
which rescuers are avail- through. mirror existing emergency
able to intervene? With The problem is that stan- response plans: An indi-
all of the technology we dard methods for routing vidual responder sends in-
have, it might seem that traffic through the internet formation to a local com-
gathering and sharing lots aren’t always able to han- mander, who combines
of information would be dle all those connections several responders’ data
pretty simple. But commu- at one time. In technical and passes the data on to
nicating through a disaster terms, the internet is a col- regional managers, who
is much more challenging lection of more than 54,000 assemble a wider picture
than it appears. smaller networks. Some of In an emergency, responders’ telecommunications could get they pass on to state or
delayed by overloaded networks. City of Hampton, Virginia.
The event itself can make the networks that make up federal response coordi-
communications worse, the internet are quite large, nators.
damaging networks and like those belonging to ma- just wait in an information entirely. In an emergency, Our routing plan makes di-
phone systems or cut- jor internet service provid- traffic jam, not moving. that could mean the dif- rect network connections
ting electricity to an area. ers or large corporations, Online, milliseconds mat- ference between life and mirror this real-world emer-
And regular people often but many of them are fairly ter – hundreds of seconds death. gency response hierarchy.
add to the problem as small. No matter their size, are effectively an eternity. Developing the emergen- When routers are allowed
they overload mobile net- each of these networks has When one router detects a cy protocol to connect only with their
works with calls, texts and equipment that lets it route network failure, it has to let Working with students from immediate neighbors in
other electronic messages traffic to each of the oth- all the others know what’s Rochester Institute of Tech- the hierarchy, they can
checking on loved ones or ers. happened, and how to re- nology’s Golisano Col- notice when links fail and
seeking help. Computer networks don’t route their traffic. This is like lege of Computing and reroute traffic much more
As researchers about digi- all connect directly to having just one traffic cop Information Sciences, we quickly.q
tal networks and emer- each other. And their digi-
gency communications, tal addresses don’t help
we are developing a faster much – we humans assume
and more reliable way to 12 Main Street and 14 Main
send and receive large Street are next door, but
amounts of data through computers with similar nu-
the internet in times of cri- meric addresses may not
sis. Working with actual re- be physical neighbors to
sponders and emergency each other.
managers, we have cre- As a result, the router con-
ated a method for giving necting each of these
urgent information priority 54,000 networks to the rest
over other internet traffic, of the internet must keep a
effectively creating a high- list of every one of its coun-
speed lane on the internet terparts, and the most ef-
for use in emergencies. ficient way to reach each
While a national emer- of them. This is like needing
gency responder network a list of written directions for
initiative called FirstNet is every place in the world
beginning to get going, it you might want to go.
requires building an all-new This system, governed by
wireless network just for the rules set out in the “bor-
emergency services to use. der gateway protocol,”
By contrast, our system uses works well most of the time.