Making Things Talk

SESSIONLESS NETWORKS 259

Conclusion

Sessionless networks can be really handy when you’re just passing short messages

around and don’t need a lot of acknowledgment. They involve a lot less work, because

you don’t have to maintain the connection. They also give you a lot more freedom

in how many devices you want to address at once.

As you can see by comparing the two projects in this

chapter, there’s not a lot of work to be done to switch from

directed messages and broadcast messages when you’re

making a sessionless network. It’s best to default to directed

messages when you can, in order to reduce the traffic for

those devices that don’t need to get every message.

Now that you’ve got a good grasp of both session-based

and sessionless networks, the next chapters switch

direction slightly to talk about two other activities

connecting networks to the physical world: location

and identification.

X

The solar energy display, by Gilad Lotan and Angela Pablo.

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260 MAKING THINGS TALK

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