NetLink

NetLink

Puts practical Packet Switching Technology in your Fallout 4 Game.

NetLink is a Local Area Network system that looks and feels suspiciously similar to the real world's well known Ethernet. Yes, like that LAN cable from your gaming rig to the Internet router. Except, NetLink runs along Fallout 4 workshop power connections instead: Wired, wireless or snapped, doesn't matter. So it's not only just like Ethernet, but simultaneously also like 802. 11 WLAN and like Power Line Comms. Inside your Fallout 4 Game. How cool is that.

Imagine the possibilities.

Brief Introduction

In NetLink parlance, a Station is currently defined as an ObjectReference that a) can be connected to a workshop power grid and which b) has the NetLink:LinkLayer (or compatible) script attached to it. A small settlement network of NetLink Stations might therefore look like this:

Any Station on the power grid depicted above can communicate with any other Station on that power grid. The only limitation is that the wireless segment requires power for transmission. Wired and snapped Stations otoh are technically capable of communicating across unpowered (data-only) links.

Before you ask: Yes, it's possible to create compatible LinkLayer scripts that are not dependent on a Workshop Power Grid. Such a script variant could instead use, say, an In-Game Radio Station or whatever else as the "physical" Layer for the network. But I have not done this yet. I intend to.

Station Addressing Modes

NetLink supports multiple schemes to address Stations on the local network: Loopback (send to Self), Unicast (send to a specific Station), Broadcast (send to all connected Stations) and Multicast (send to a list of specific Stations) are well known from the real world. When delivering Frames, NetLink further behaves exactly like real-world switched Ethernet: Unicast Frames on the local network are delivered solely to the intended destination, with a fallback to Broadcast mode for unknown (non-local) destinations only. This is in steep contrast to "classic" Ethernet before Network Switches were a thing, eg the Thicknet/Thinnet era of early Ethernet and -later- of Ethernet HUBs. Back then, all Frames were always broadcasted to everyone on the network.

Translated to the in-game scenario, NetLink's built-in switching capabilities result in minimal script load and allow for very large networks: Participating Stations are not regularly forced to receive (and then dismiss) network traffic that doesn't concern them.

Different Station addressing modes in NetLink, with Loopback mode not depicted.

Multicast mode works only slightly different to IRL: Instead of sending Frames through a Mul