Monday

Beacon's readings now travel from the greenhouse to mission control through a chain of relay stations.

Comet pins a map of the relay to the wall. Five stations, joined by lines.

"The greenhouse talks to Hub North, and Hub North talks to mission control," she says. "Simple."

Wren traces the map with his finger. "What do you notice? There is more than one way across."

Nova hovers over the map. "Every line is a link, and every chain of links is a path," she says. "Which paths could a message take?"

Comet squints. "I count at least three. I want to know why we have so many."

A computing device is a physical thing that can run a program. Computers, tablets, servers, routers and smart sensors are all examples.

A computing system is a group of devices and programs working together for a common purpose.

A computer network is a group of connected computing devices that can send or receive data.

Beacon's sensors, the relay stations and the mission control computers form one computing system.

A path is a chain of directly connected devices. It begins at the sender and ends at the receiver.

Routing is the process of finding a path from sender to receiver.

Bandwidth is the most data a network can send in a fixed amount of time. It is usually measured in bits per second.

This relay map is invented for our story. Sketch it as five circles joined by six lines.

Great mapping, developer. Tomorrow you will cut a message into packets.