Client Server application (side by side)

Just to give you a hint: do you know that a gravitational field of the Earth is directed downward? A body with mass M has potential energy U = Mgh, where h is the altitude of the body, and g — acceleration due to gravity, so the same body gets different potential energy depending on its position, the more, the higher.

Now, think about the difference between the energy of a bit in different floors. Main problem here is: does this difference in potential energy depend on the value of the bit? In other words, if the bit with the value of one gets the potential difference ΔU when elevated to the second floor, what would be this value for a bit equals to 0: zero, ΔU or some other value?

Remember that in remoting the data is serialized into array of byte byte[]. As in general case all bytes have different values, the problem is that data serialized on one floor is decerialized on another floor, where the energy of bytes is different.

Your home task would be to resolve this problem by writing an algorithm which calculates compensation in data energy correctly.

—SA

[NOTE by TRK3:]

This is actually a simplification of the problem for a body at rest.

In actual fact, if the building in which the two floors are located is on Earth, then you will need to take into account the effects of the Earth's rotation.

The kinetic energy of a bit one floor up will be higher that (because it is moving faster) than the kinetic energy of a bit one floor down. Also, as bits descend or ascend you'll need to compensate for the coriolis effect.

Since you are just starting out, I'd suggest that you first learn to program a client / server application with two computers sitting side by side at exactly the same height (and perferrable arranged East/West of each other so that they are at the same latitude and have the same rotational speed). Once you've mastered that, then you can move the computers to separate floors and add a module to compensate for the change in potential and kinetic energy of the bits as they change altitude. It always best to start simple and then work up.

- TRK3

[Reply by SA:]

I assume acceleration of rotation is included in the local value of "g". Coriolis effect is the effect of second order, so we can neglect it; also, Coriolis effect is insignificant if electrons predominantly move vertically, from one floor to another.

We can ignore quantum-mechanical effects if the size of the local network is much more than the characteristic wavelength of the data package transferred by the network. However, this is very useful to compare these parameter to justify my approximation — thank you very much for your note.

—SA

The answer, of course, is yes. Ultimately it all boils down to electricity. Data is really just a bunch of 1s and 0s (the basis of all computing as it stands at the moment), and this is a convenient way of viewing the fact that these 1s and 0s just stand for electricity being on or off at a particular point in time. Now, armed with this understanding, the question you have to answer for yourself is can electricity flow between the floors in the building?

Now, you might be wondering what happens if you don't have network cabling in place (along which the electricity flows)? Well, the data is transmitted wirelessly in this case, using a form of radio signal, in much the same way that your mobile phone works.

There you go. You now understand how the data can be transmitted.

Only if the the building has a lift.

Actually you can do it even if the building doesn't have a lift. See:

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1149.txt[^]