Stanford researchers: Ants have been using Internet algorithms for ages
According to a paper co-authored by Stanford computer scientist Balaji Prabhakar and Stanford biologist Deborah Gordon, the Internet algorithms which are used in Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) have been used by ants for ages.
According to the two Stanford researchers, a specific breed of harvester ants - Pogonomyrmex barbatus – apparently speak the language of the Internet as they converse in “ifs,” “elses” and “end ifs” to determine how much food is available; thus behaving in a manner which is quite similar to the one which TCPs use for discovering the amount of bandwidth available for data transfer.
In what apparently is a far more interesting disclosure by the researchers, ants can perfectly mirror two TCP phases --- the “slow start” algorithm which TCP uses for controlling congestion within the network; and the “time-out” protocol which occurs during the snapping or disruption of a data transfer link.
As per the elaboration by the researchers, ants use the “slow start” principle when they first send out foragers to find out the availability of food before they finally tweak the rate of outgoing foragers; and “time-out” principle is used when no more ants are sent out in case the foragers fail to return within twenty minutes.
With the Stanford researchers’ findings on the so-called "Anternet" published in the August 23 issue of PLoS Computational Biology, Prabhakar said that the algorithm the ants use for determining the availability of food is “essentially the same as that used in the transmission control protocol.”
Submitted by Keshav Seth on Tue,
http://www.topnews.in