Fiction: Passengers on routers

Date 30 November 2046

Last year when the INS installed the five new terabit firewall they thought it would have been sufficient to filter all the inbound passengers, but it seems that their decision to order another set of hundred terabit routers last week speaks of their inability to predict inbound traffic.

Forty-five years ago when people first started teleporting objects many couldn't have guessed it would make the INS recruit hackers to do their work one-day. Till then, sneaking into US meant buying tickets and getting a visa stamp on paper passport, not to speak of the 22 hours sleepless horrible journey around the world. Today, the wire makes it look so stupid.

With everything shifting onto IP, it didn't take much time for the hackers to build a transport mechanism using native IP protocol. And within a few months there were a whole lot of real objects being teleported to people all over the world. The reason I call them objects is that the receiver was never sure of what was actually sent to him. The probability of objects making through in perfect condition was as small as 0.001 percent. And while the scientist were working on the causes of errors creeping in the encoding the decoding process of teleporting, people found pleasure in sending fruits which came out as juice on the other end. To some hackers it was just a way of saving money from buying a juicer, but to some like Tom, it was frustrating to not be able to send the Gold plated watch to his friend in one piece. Personally I never liked the idea of seeing a watch needle outside the watch anyway, just like I never like witnessing burnt rubber arriving instead of the new pair of Nike shoes for which I'd paid from my own digi cash account.

However the wait for the `better technology' was soon over, when Mr.Charles Carlton discovered the unexpected bug in a small chip called the XF98DL430 which was used in all decoding boxes around the world. With small software upgrade people were able to send cards and gifts at 50% probability. I myself received my first complete set of hackers tools from the US in one piece. Governments certainly had a tough time dealing with their in ability of charging a duty on goods arriving. When they found there wasn't much they could do about objects being sent, the started allowing free Internet trade of anything lesser than 5 tons. Five tons by the way was way too huge for the networks to handle so the limit was kind of necessary. In spite of all the jubilation and excitement over the various political and technical changes happening, it was still common still to find melted floppies and roasted ducks coming in through the decoders. And as if that was not enough there were times when I received tomato sauce spilled over my weekly Linux magazine.

Who could have thought that there would be a time like today when people would be able to travel around the world in a matter of minutes in one of the safest means of transport ever devised. IPv8 is still the language spoken, though the data-layer2 (l2) protocols have been changing over the decades to adapt to this new high speed era. I being a techno freak have a 10GB vlan at my home connected onto our city backbone of 10TB which is just about sufficient for a few thousands of people to travel around the city in a noiseless pollution free manner.

But as I said the beginning, immigration and terrorism are a growing menace around the world and immigration agencies like the INS in US, have started recruited hackers to make the Firewalls hacker proof. Since the time certificate authorities joined hands with governments around the world, the Personal ID is the one and only unique identification process a person has to prove his identity. Today almost all border routers around the world incorporate these ID filters to prevent unauthorized entry into the country. INS itself has been doubling its firewall strength almost 3 times a year to.

There was a time when people thought 128 bit signatures on the ID would be sufficient for the entire century. The illusion soon left them when the quantum computers were invented which could factorize thousands of bits in a few seconds. And though it might have amazed a few back then, it is a fact that my watch here on my wrist is itself capable of factorizing 64kbit numbers.

However that's not the reason I am writing this article anyway. I just wanted to inform you that I got a confirmation from the US consulate today that my entry to US through router 11-us-202.41.131.69 has been confirmed and I have to make an entry through their decoders within 48 hours. And in-case you cant get hold of my decoder address I'll still be available at my older email address rkt(at)poboxes.com

28th August 1998

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