Equal Device Network

Equal Device Network (EDN) is a proposal that describes how to interconnect devices in an unified networking model.

Purpose of EDN

Unified wired interface: Light Peak (replace RJ45, RJ11, PS/2, USB, 1394, ATA, SATA, SCSI, VGA, DVI, HDMI, etc.)
Unified wireless interface: Wi-Fi (replace IR, bluetooth, etc.)
The network can be wired, wireless or hybrid.
Switches and routers are optional in the network.
DHCP server is optional in the network.
All device nodes can communicate directly with each other even there is no switch in the middle.
The network is dynamic, with any node can be hot plugged in or plugged off.
All device nodes are equal. (Compare to master and slave model).

A visual monitor (as a node itself in a specific EDN) lists all device nodes in the EDN.
With help of another node, such as a keyboard, it can monitor, assign, configure, or command each device node.
It's useful especially for those devices which don't have displays themselves, such as keyboard, mouse, hard drive, etc.

DHCP: When a device is power up, it obtains an IP address in the existing network.
If DHCP fails, the device assign itself an IP address uniquely in the network.

First, in P2P mode, two device nodes on the network shall establish transmit/receive relation; in broadcast model, establishment is optional.
Second, two device nodes communicate with each other on a specific application protocol over IP layer.
Third, session is ended when necessarily.

On a network consists multiple computers, keyboards, mice, hard drives, monitors, phones, earphones, remote controls, TVs, cameras, card readers, etc.
Because all nodes are equal, a keyboard can choose which computer shall the signals be sent to. Same as mice. Of course, a computer itself can choose which keyboards, mice, hard drives, monitors to communicate with.
A computer can use a phone as an internet gateway or vice-versa.
A keyboard can serve both a computer and a smartphone, which means the computer and the phone share this keyboard like it's connected with a KVM.
A TV in kitchen can choose video source from a DVD player, cable TV or computer.

This kind of EDN is safe because it's isolated.
For example, if an EDN consists only a computer and hard drive with a Light Peak cable.