When disaster strikes, emergency responders often rely on the internet to communicate and share crucial information on the task at hand. With that in mind, a group of researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology has proposed a method of creating a high-speed lane of online traffic dedicated to this kind of usage.
The team has created a new network protocol to ensure that vital communications reach their intended recipient, according to a report from Science Daily. The Multi Node Label Routing (MNLR) protocol features an immediate “failover” mechanism, which means that if a link or node fails — which is not uncommon when the network is being stressed — the data is sent via an alternate path immediately.
This protocol can run beneath established internet protocols, which means that other users’ access to the web should not be affected by its implementation.
Earlier this month, the MNLR protocol was put head-to-head with the widely used Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), using the United States Global Environment for Network Innovation. It took the BGP around 150 seconds to recover from a link failure, while the MNLR protocol was able to do so in less than 30 seconds.
Nirmala Shenoy, a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology and the principal investigator on the project, attributes the problems with current protocols to their age. They were put in place at a time when the kind of information transferred via the internet was very different, and they’re not necessarily well-suited to its current usage.
“Sharing data on the internet during an emergency is like trying to drive a jet down the street at rush hour,” said Jennifer Schneider, who served as co-principal investigator alongside Shenoy. “A lot of the critical information is too big and data heavy for the existing internet pipeline.”
In a disaster situation, emergency responders might need to exchange maps, details of where personnel are being dispatched to, cell phone location data, video, and audio calls, and various other pieces of information depending on the nature of the event. Given that such a scenario is likely to prompt a flurry of communication among civilians, internet traffic can become incredibly congested.
While the internet becomes more vital to everyday life all the time, some of the foundational elements of its operation have been in place for many years. Research projects like this one help ensure that the web can continue to grow and evolve in step with our usage.
Did you think hitting delete on your AI chatbot conversation actually makes it disappear? Georgia Tech researchers just proved that's not entirely true. They have built a forensic tool called ORISA that can dig deleted conversations from your phone and even rebuild them into a working chatbot session you can keep talking to.
How can ORISA bring deleted AI conversations back?
Touchscreen laptops have been around for years. You can get them in all sizes and shapes. Just not from Apple. For years, the Cupertino giant has treated the idea of a touchscreen MacBook the way I treat a meeting that could have been an email: with open contempt. However, Wednesday looks like the day the company could finally change its mind.
The latest Apple invite puts the “Pro and Tell” showcase in Los Angeles at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on October 28, 2026. Instead of a regular live-streamed keynote, it is an invitation-only, hands-on event for a handful of press and creators (similar to what the company did for the MacBook Neo earlier this year).
Two residents of Chicago have filed a lawsuit in the US over claims that robots run by Coco Robotics and Serve Robotics captured their facial and hand measurements without consent, bringing renewed attention to the food delivery robots. The cases raise a troubling question: If a robot delivers food to your door, can it also be gathering sensitive information about you?
According to a report by The Associated Press, the proposed class-action lawsuits were filed in Cook County on Oct. 9 and allege violations of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act. The complaints claim that the robots’ cameras and LiDAR sensors captured information on customers’ faces and hands as they approached the machines to pick up their orders. Both have denied the allegations.