it seems that for each read i do of the matrix chapter, something new shows up and smacks me in the face.
the latest bit is the part about nodes. seems they can be equal to a single device, and equal to a whole network of devices.
this explains why someone claimed, right after SR4 came out, that each device is a seperate node and therefor requires a subscription to comunicate with the comlink.
i tought about this, is that yes they are a seperate node. but thats only when you first buy them. when they become part of the PAN they become part of a single, large node.
why is this? because PAN is short for Personal Area Network (two others are LAN, Local Area Network, and WAN, Wide Area Network. in real life the internet is the mother of all WAN's, or a collection of WAN's depending on how you look at it). and a node can represent both a single device and a whole network.
it seems that the new matrix rules use a lot more concepts from real life computer networking.
there seems to be two layers to the matrix, a phyical layer (where comlinks and other physical devices live) and a logical layer (where you have stuff like nodes).
any number of physical devices can hide behind a single node, basicly.
this means that yes you can have your smartlink and you AR glasses (or cybereyes) act as a seperate node to the comlink. it allso means that you can run a IC or a edit program on your cyberlimb (alltho it would be a very weak one as the limb would not have much computing power, if any at all).
another interesting thing is that if you have your comlink run IC or similar, your effectivly protecting your whole PAN node. and that can be all your cyberware, your smartlink, your AR glasses and more.
one thing im not entirely sure about is encryption. if you encrypt your node (if that can at all be done. i dont see anything about it, but i see that you can encrypt individual devices) then all communications inside said node's network would be encrypted.
and even if you cant encrypt a entire node, you can encrypt individual parts of it.
this means that a attacking hacker may well find that he have to break the encryption you have put on your smartlink and AR glasses to be able to mess with them.
i dont know, this may have been obvious to others but there seems to be a bit of confusion about what a node realy is and things related to that.
i guess one can boil it down to:
a node is one or more devices, that have a (shared) matrix presence.
and any device thats part of a node can communicate with any other device without the need of a subscription (im guessing that a limit to that is that the devices have to be within direct range of each other, or some other device under the same node).
if you know a bit about real life ip networking, i think you can say that a node is equivalent to a subnet mask.