Editing Mesh (section)

= Islands in the Net =
In the time of Eclipse Phase, information can become outdated quite fast, and the accessibility of new information depends on your location. It’s easy to keep up-to-date on your local habitat/city or planetary body, but keeping current on events elsewhere is typically reliant on the speed of light.
If you happen to be in a station in the Kuiper Belt, on the edge of the solar system 50 astronomical units from the terrestrial inner planets, waiting on a message from Mars, the signal carrying the message will be roughly seven hours old when it reaches you. Of course it will only reach you that fast if you are using quantum farcast, which is only limited by the speed of light (not to mention rare and expensive in most habitats). If you are not using a quantum farcaster, the signal may take even longer and is prone to interference and noise, deteriorating the quality and possibly losing some of the content, especially over major distances. Whenever you start dealing with communication between habitats, you have to factor in the light-speed lag, the amount of time it takes even the fastest transmission to reach you. This lag works both ways, so trying to hold a conversation with someone just 5 light-seconds away means that you’re waiting at least 10 seconds to get the reply to whatever you just said. For this reason, AR and VR communications are almost always conducted locally, while standard messaging is used for nonlocal communications. For detailed discussions, it is often simpler to send a fork of yourself to have the conversation and then return.
Quantum-entanglement communicators are one solution to this light-speed lag, although a burdensome and expensive one. QE comms allow for faster-than-light communication to an entangled communicator, though each transmission uses up a precious amount of quantum-entangled bits, which are in limited supply.
Transmissions made between habitats almost always occur via each station’s massive data relays, where they are then distributed into the local mesh. This bottleneck is often used by authoritarian habitats to monitor data transmissions and even filter or censor certain public non-encrypted content. Some messages are also prioritized over others, potentially meaning further delays.
The method of transmission between habitats also sometimes matters. Radio and neutrino broadcasts can be intercepted by anyone, whereas tight-beam laser or microwave links are specifically used as a point-to-point method that minimizes interception and eavesdropping. The use of quantum farcasting using neutrino systems is completely secure, however, and is the most frequently-used intra-habitat link. What these lags, bottlenecks, and prioritizations mean is that some news and data takes a particularly long-time to trickle from one local mesh network to another, passing slowly from habitat to habitat. This means that there are always gradients of information available to different local mesh networks, typically depending on proximity and the importance of the information. Some data even gets lost along the way, never making it further than a habitat or two before it is lost in the noise. The only way to retrieve such information is to track it down to its source.

== Darkcasts ==
“Darkcasts” are ranged communications that go outside of legal and approved channels. Since certain habitats have strict regulations on transmission content, forking, egocasting, infomorphs, muse abilities, and AGI code, underworld groups like the ID crew profit by offering illegal data transmission services. Primarily used for censored data and banned content (like illegal XPs or malware), local organized crime factions also often offer egocasting services complete with resleeving and leasable morphs, allowing egos that prefer discretion to enter or leave a habitat without drawing attention. Though such authorities hunt down these darkcast networks whenever they get a chance, many habitats have a sophisticated darkcast infrastructure that makes use of decoys, temporary communications lines, relays, and regular transmitter relocation—not to mention judicious bribing and blackmailing.