Halcyon
Stellvia Corporation owns and operates a private Interwave network, named Halcyon, primarily for corporate use. The overloading of the public Interwave on the announcement of SOS-Con and on the day King of Fen-ers was opened to the public convinced the Board of Directors that having control of a communications system that could not be overloaded by others during an emergency was a prudent use of corporate funds.
Halcyon isn't really secret - it's just obscure. Most people haven't even heard of it, and the majority of the people who have heard of Halcyon think it's just another part of the Interwave.
Architecture
Halcyon is made up only of Interwave Backbone Stations. The hardware is divided into first-tier and second-tier stations; the primary difference between the two is their encryption capability.
First-tier stations are installed at major Stellvia Corporation and Artemis Foundation installations (Stellvia, Wonderland, Beta, Odyssey, Ultima, Chawla, McAuliffe, and the Handwavium Propulsion Laboratory), the Nikaido Foundation office in the Watchtower, and the capitals or head offices of a select few of Stellvia Corporation's allies: Crystal Tokyo, the Roadhouse, and Prometheus Forge. There are also first-tier nodes racked in the communications arrays of the Epsilon Blade and the Digamma Thunderbolt. (There was a first-tier node at Korolev Air Force Base; it was dismantled and returned to Stellvia Corporation in February 2018.)
Second-tier stations are installed at Arisia Station, The White Tower, the Helium Police Department, the capitals or head offices of some of Stellvia Corporation's allies and major business partners (Coruscant, the Hermes Universal Deliveries head office at Port Phobos, the Jupiter Mining Corporation head office at Serenity Valley), and for some inadequately-explained reason,[1] 77 Frigga. There are also second-tier nodes racked in the communications arrays of Challenger, Pinafore, Takumi F., White Stallion, and the Rinna Kazamatsuri.
| A Trail of Breadcrumbs |
| The Artemis Foundation's first Zeta Tucanae exploration mission dropped second-tier nodes (roughly one per light-year) along the path between Sol and Zeta Tucanae on its outward voyage. This is the single longest communications channel in the history of mankind as of 2022. |
Traffic originating and ending at first-tier Halycon stations is encrypted.[2] Traffic passing through a second-tier Halcyon node or a non-Halcyon node is not encrypted.
The Halycon system is connected to the public Interwave for the convenience of its users.
Prioritization
Halycon traffic is prioritized in the following order, with the highest priority at the top of the list:
- Stellvia Corporation official business;
- emergency traffic for the Global Frequency, the Space Patrol, or the Great Justice Troubleshooters;[3]
- Artemis Foundation official business;
- Nikaido Foundation official business;
- messages from or for a Stellvia Corporation employee;
- messages from or for a Stellvia Corporation shareholder;
- messages from or for a Stellvia Corporation client or customer present at a Stellvia Corporation facility;
- messages between Stellvia Corporation allies that are not intended for anyone in Stellvia Corporation;
- low-bandwidth traffic between nodes on the public Interwave.
Notes
- ↑ Unlike the usual meaning of this phrase, in this case it's code for "That's classified Great Justice business."
- ↑ Takami Sakuragi, Lebia Maverick, Sora Hasegawa, and Dee started with the SQUID42 encryption process that was removed from the Whole Fenspace Catalog prior to its initial release, and have never stopped improving it. The encryption "forked" in March 2018, with Takami and Lebia developing a radically different system than Sora and Dee. Neither fork is compatible with each other, the January 2018 encryption, or the SQUID42 variant used by the Space Patrol. The three groups have an agreement-in-principle to not deliberately break the other groups' encryption systems without an order from a Convention court... but all three groups use one-time pads for anything that's vitally secret.
- ↑ All three groups have been made aware that this privilege will be withdrawn if it is abused.
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