CordyNet: A Mycelium-Based Network
Long before fiber optics, satellites, wireless communications, packet switching, and angry gamers complaining about latency and packet loss, nature already solved distributed networking in its simple but elegant brilliancy.
Fungi are the masters of computer networking, serving mycelium-based global communications that while not as fast as light, are still capable of covering long distances, and demonstrating properties that many modern networks still struggle to achieve: self-healing, decentralized routing, fault tolerance, and zero maintenance contracts.
This article explores the real biological foundations behind fungal networks, extrapolates them irresponsibly into the realm of speculative engineering, and draws deeply unfair comparisons to human-made systems.
1. Introduction: The Original Worldwide Web
Fungi have existed for over a billion years, quietly colonizing land while the rest of life was still figuring out how legs work. One of their most impressive features is the mycelial network: vast underground structures composed of hyphae that can span kilometers, sometimes covering entire forests.
These networks are often described as the “Wood Wide Web”, a term that sounds like a TED Talk title but is, annoyingly, rooted in real research. Through these networks, fungi exchange nutrients, chemical signals, and information between plants, trees, and other organisms.
Yes, information. No, not tweets.
2. Biological Foundations (Unfortunately Real)
2.1 Mycelium as a Network Substrate
Mycelium consists of microscopic filaments called hyphae, which branch, merge, and reorganize dynamically. From a network perspective, this creates:
- A highly redundant mesh topology
- Multiple paths between nodes
- No central point of failure
- No single maintainer to blame
Unlike traditional networks, where redundancy is carefully planned and budget-approved, fungi simply grow everywhere and let natural selection handle the rest.
2.2 Signal Transmission (No, Not Wi-Fi)
Fungal networks transmit information through:
- Electrical impulses (measurable and studied)
- Chemical signaling
- Resource gradients
These signals are slow, analog, and deeply unimpressed by your latency requirements.
Still, studies have shown that fungi can propagate electrical signals in patterns that resemble spike trains, not unlike neurons, leading to the deeply uncomfortable realization that routing protocols might not be uniquely human.
To be clear: fungi are not thinking.
They are, however, communicating, coordinating, and optimizing resource distribution.
Which is already more than can be said for some enterprise networks.
3. Routing, Load Balancing, and Other Insults to Engineers
3.1 Adaptive Routing
When part of a mycelial network is damaged, fungi do not open a Jira ticket.
They simply reroute growth around the failure.
Experiments show that fungi naturally optimize paths between nutrient sources, often converging on solutions comparable to human-designed transport networks. In some studies, fungal growth patterns approximated railway systems with alarming efficiency.
This suggests a form of emergent routing logic, driven by local rules rather than global control.
In other words: no control plane, no data plane, no meetings.
3.2 Self-Healing Infrastructure
Unlike fiber cables, which require:
- excavation
- permits
- technicians
- apologies
mycelium simply grows back.
Damage detection is implicit. Repair is automatic. Downtime is accepted as a temporary inconvenience rather than a career-ending incident.
From a resilience standpoint, this is infuriatingly effective.
4. Multi-Tenant Architecture (Trees Are Freeloaders)
Plants and trees connect to fungal networks via mycorrhizal associations, exchanging sugars for nutrients and information. This creates a shared infrastructure where:
- Trees can warn each other of pests
- Nutrients can be redistributed from surplus to deficit areas
- Weak nodes receive assistance (yes, really)
From a systems perspective, CordyNet operates as a multi-tenant, cooperative network, where fairness is enforced biologically rather than contractually.
There is no billing. There is no SLA.
There is only efficiency. And survival.
5. Security Model (Shockingly Robust)
CordyNet operates under a zero-trust model where:
- No node is assumed benign
- Interactions are chemical, contextual, and localized
- Compromised sections are isolated naturally
While fungi are still vulnerable to some external factors, the network as a whole exhibits strong resistance to total collapse.
Notably, there are no known ransomware attacks targeting mycelium. This is mostly because fungi do not store Bitcoin, or any sensitive data in a single unencrypted node.
6. Performance Considerations (Please Lower Your Expectations)
Let us be absolutely clear:
- CordyNet does not outperform fiber optics.
- Latency is measured in seconds to hours.
- Bandwidth is best described as “nutritional”.
CordyNet will not stream video.
It will not let you play videogames with below 1 ms latency.
It will not run Kubernetes.
It will not host your startup.
Or, in other words, you cannot plug your headphones into a mushroom and expect to listen to Spotify. Hard to believe, but you actually can listen to some “music” if you plug a synthesizer instead.
However, for resilient, low-bandwidth, planet-scale coordination, it has been quietly operational for millions of years.
6.1 CordyNet vs Morse Code
However, while we assume CordyNet cannot compete with modern digital communication systems, it can outperform some digital communication systems.
From a purely theoretical standpoint, CordyNet would outperform something like Morse code — not in speed, but in persistence. While Morse requires conscious operators and deliberate signaling, mycelial communication is continuous, autonomous, and resilient by design. The messages are slower, but the network never stops listening.
Furthermore, mycelial signaling requires no encoding or decoding step at all. The signal is not “read”; it is simply acted upon. As a result, transmission errors are not corrected. Errors exist, but the system doesn’t care — selection absorbs them instead of correcting them.
Morse code, by contrast, relies on conscious operators and deliberate interpretation, making it inherently vulnerable to fatigue, misinterpretation, and timing errors.
7. Discussion: Lessons for Human Networks
CordyNet teaches us uncomfortable lessons:
- Decentralization works.
- Redundancy beats optimization.
- Self-healing is better than documentation.
- Nature does not care about your architecture diagrams.
Most importantly, fungi demonstrate that complex, reliable systems can emerge without centralized control, versioning strategies, or conference talks.
8. Conclusion
CordyNet is not a proposal for future infrastructure. It is a reminder that nature solved many of our hardest engineering problems long before we invented electricity, and did so with damp soil and mild indifference.
While we should not replace the internet with mushrooms, we might consider learning from them. If nothing else, fungi prove that the first global network:
- was organic,
- was resilient,
- and never once needed a reboot.
We often take pride in our engineering feats, but many of our best ideas echo solutions nature arrived at first. Some of our most successful engineering designs are even directly inspired by nature itself. It is both grounding and humbling to realize that evolution, through countless iterations of trial and error, has produced systems whose elegance and resilience we are still trying to match.
References (Real)
- Simard et al., Nature, “Mycorrhizal networks and forest ecology”
- Adamatzky, Fungal Electronics
- Heaton et al., Adaptive transport networks in fungi
- Tero et al., Rules for biologically inspired adaptive network design