Defeating the tyranny of distance: Harvest Tech’s Nodestream eats ‘remote’ for breakfast

Harvest Technology envisions a world where ‘remote’ just doesn’t mean what it used to – and its Nodestream tech could go a long way to getting us there.

Harvest Tech’s Nodestream protocol promises video-capable connections in even the most remote locations. Pic: Getty Images.

• Nodestream is a network agnostic communications protocol designed to transmit large amounts of voice, video and data on limited, unreliable connections

• The product uses a 384-bit encryption and works to reduce bandwidth requirements by up to 70pc

• Nodestream is designed to enable live two-way communication between sites that would normally be out of reach

 

Special Report: Harvest Technology’s Nodestream protocol promises video-capable connections in even the most remote locations. We delve beneath the hood to better understand the tech and its far-reaching applications.

The world is more interconnected than ever before. Physical and digital infrastructure has reached incredible heights, connecting us from the depths of the ocean to the literal stratosphere and enabling instant, seamless communication from pretty much anywhere with an internet connection.

That said, there are still places that are hard to reach.

At the top of a mountain range, in the middle of an ocean, or deep in the desert, a reliable internet connection is hard to get your hands on, but that doesn’t make communication any less vital.

In fact, it’s an even more urgent and potentially life-saving resource out there, where it’d take a helicopter or a plane to get to any kind of formal help.

Enter, the Nodestream protocol. It’s a technology designed by Harvest Technology (ASX:HTG), capable of streaming live data in both directions using the thinnest of internet connections.

The Nodestream protocol

Living in a post-Starlink world, there are more than 11,000 satellites orbiting the Earth.

They’re capable of providing internet access to just about every inch of the world’s surface, although practically their individual orbits may allow for some small gaps at different times of the day and year.

It’s an incredible feat, but satellite connections are spotty – they have low bandwidth and high latency, meaning they can’t send large amounts of data at once, and there tends to be big delays between sending data, and receiving it on the other end.

That’s where the Nodestream protocol comes in.

Using Harvest Technology’s transport protocol, the system is able to reduce bandwidth requirements by up to 70%, while maintaining supercomputer-level encryption with 384-bit security keys.

“We liken it to fitting a 10-inch pipe down a 2-inch pipe,” Harvest Tech chief product officer Damiain Brown explained.

“It’s been specifically designed to operate in contested and congested environments, extremely remote, low bandwidth, high latency connections, so it's extremely reliable and survivable.

“We'd like to think it is the most survivable protocol that's available.”

In practical terms, Nodestream enhances communication over unreliable or high-latency connections, such as satellite links. It can repackage data in transit and optimize the connection to deliver up to 70% more throughput. For example, instead of a single choppy video stream, you could have up to 16 running smoothly.

That’s the difference between being limited to making calls or sending emails alone, or being able to live-stream a high-quality video feed with synchronised audio and data coming directly, in real-time, from a remote site.

“You're enabling communication and two-way transaction of information between sites that were previously cut off,” Brown said. “That’s step one.”

“And then you look at step two – what can you actually do with that and how does it add value to a business?

“That might be things as simple as remote situational awareness – not having to disturb someone in the middle of an operation.

“It would mean I can get high quality video back so I can see exactly what's happening on that work site.”

Instant access to expertise

Harvest Technology envisions a world where “remote” just doesn’t mean what it used to anymore.

Let’s use a deep-water cargo freighter as an example.

The operator of the freighter gets an emergency alert.

The vessel is in distress. Something has gone wrong.

Normally, the only recourse the operator would have in that situation is attempting to make contact with the boat via radio and satellite, or in the worst-case scenario, contacting local authorities to investigate.

With Nodestream, instead of being limited to a phone call, the operator could plug-in via a limited satellite connection and gain live access to camera feeds, sensors, and even the ship’s internal systems.

In the event of an emergency that kind of instant, live access could be the difference between life and death.

Access to medical, engineering or defence experts who can see and hear everything those on board are experiencing has the potential to transform this kind of remote, risky work, allowing skilled professionals to directly intervene from thousands of kilometres away.

“You could put a wearable with a camera on your head that's transmitting a picture back to a hospital and you can have a group of doctors or surgeons on the other end of that walking you through what to do next,” Brown said.

“You can get someone telling you exactly what to do and give a patient the best chance of survival.”

A new level of connectivity

The potential implications for operations management in highly dangerous, remote locations are huge.

Firefighting crews working in isolated mountainous regions could be fully connected with live video and audio feeds to control centres back at headquarters.

Robotics engineers could make deep-sea oil rig repairs from the comfort of their office desks at home.

Researchers could monitor turtle populations on inaccessible, uninhabited islands from half a world away.

“Let's say you're sailing through the Gulf of Aden and some unwanted parties land on your ship – you can now see exactly what's going on and start planning how you're going to get them off without the people on board even knowing that you're watching,” Brown described.

Aside from the health and safety implications, the potential for cost reduction is also huge.

Instead of sending a full sized, 100-crew ship to service oil rigs, operators could send much smaller completely unmanned vessels onsite to deploy robotics controlled by onshore experts hundreds or even thousands of kilometres away.

“Operating these sized vessels for even a day can cost as much as $300,000,” Brown explained, “It’s like the most expensive Uber ever. Two-thirds of the people onboard are just there to navigate and maintain the vessel.”

For Harvest Tech, that’s just the first step. The company imagines that in the not-too-distant future, this kind of risky human labour will be replaced by sensors, cameras, robotics and advanced communications infrastructure.

“Whether it’s for search and rescue, military activities, resource exploration… Why have people in these really remote and austere, hostile environments if you don't need to?” Brown asked.

Harvest Tech’s Nodestream system is already deployed in marine and maritime environments, supporting applications such as remote certification surveys and inspections, real-time situational awareness for supervising at-sea operations, and sub-sea remote monitoring to transmit data from the seafloor to surface assets

But is it secure?

The kind of instant, live access Harvest Tech is offering with Nodestream presents a lot of opportunities, but the security concerns, especially for sensitive operations like military or oil and gas uses, are obvious.

“It was important to make our connection secure enough that customers would have peace of mind,” Brown said.

Nodestream is network agnostic, meaning it can function with just about any data connection available – satellite, IP radio, cellular, WiFi – if it can transport data packets, Nodestream can use it.

Each and every data packet we send is encoded and decoded using a 384bit encryption. Without getting too technical, an encryption key is a string of ones and zeros used to encode data when it leaves a source, and de-code it when it reaches its destination. A 384-bit key is literally 384 values long.

While the math is rough, hobbyists estimate cracking even a much shorter 256-bit key would take the world’s fastest supercomputer years of continuous brute force cracking.

Of course, Harvest Tech uses a dynamic encryption that changes with every use, meaning even if you managed to crack one data packet – multiple years after it was sent – the key wouldn’t work for anything else.

That said, with quantum computing making incredible leaps and strides, Harvest Tech is still aware of the potential future threat.

“We’re working with partners and working with people who are at the forefront of security and encryption to make sure that out protocols, systems and frameworks are resilient to those kinds of future threats,” Brown said.

“We’ve built our system to have a flexible framework that allows us to scale capability, scale security, and scale the internal architecture to match a client’s needs and risk tolerance.”

The remote, hands-off future Harvest Tech envisions is still just a dream for now, but products like Nodestream could be a material step toward realising a much safer, leaner and more informed way of working in risky situations.

This article was developed in collaboration with Harvest Technology Group, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.

Originally published as Defeating the tyranny of distance: Harvest Tech’s Nodestream eats ‘remote’ for breakfast