The FrogNet Library
Two books. The why, and the how.
FrogNet is documented the way it was built — from first principles, and provably. One book explains the ideas to anyone; the other is the engineering manual you build a network from. Read either free.
Think first. Then work.
The two volumes are a matched set — the same architecture at two depths. Start wherever you stand: the paradigm if you want to understand it, the manual if you want to run it.
Book One · The WhyHow to Think Like a Frog
Networking for the 21st Century
How to Think Like a Frog
Networking for the 21st Century — the ideas behind the network.
Every network in use today rests on assumptions that made sense in 1969. This book takes them apart and rebuilds them for the world we actually live in — fifty years of lessons in networking, programming, and hardware moved into this century. It starts in plain English, then walks the thirteen shifts that make FrogNet different, and ends with what the system is and does today. If you read one thing first, read this.
- 1 · What FrogNet Does, in Plain English
- 2 · Introduction — the 1969 assumptions
- 3 · The Thirteen Paradigm Shifts
- 4 · What FrogNet Is and Does
- A · How FrogNet Handles Emergencies
- B · The Song of the Frogs
The videos are the other half of the documentation — watch the series →
Book Two · The HowMagnum Croakus
How to Work Like a Frog
Magnum Croakus
How to Work Like a Frog — the working companion to How to Think Like a Frog.
The complete engineering guide: how to install a node, how the mesh discovers itself, how the floating database is elected, how UnREST and semantic compression move memory instead of messages, and how to write your own handlers. When it shows a command, it is the command. Deep enough to build or deploy the network from — with worked examples, wire traces, and a falsifiable simulator throughout.
- I · What FrogNet Does
- II · Runs on What You Have
- III · Hooking Up the Network
- IV · Installing the Software
- V · Discovery
- VI · The Floating Database
- VII · Across the Internet
- VIII–X · UnREST & Handlers
- XI · The Simulator
- XII–XIII · Games & the Communicator
- App · Command & Helper Reference
- App · Glossary
Not sure which one?
You want to understand it.
You're curious what "the network is the database" means, or why a mesh that owns itself matters. Begin with How to Think Like a Frog — plain English first, no code required.
You want to build it.
You're ready to install a node, write a handler, or deploy across sites. Open Magnum Croakus — every command, wire trace, and worked example you need to work like a frog.
Everything in these is free and always will be. They are the only prerequisite for most of the work going on in the guild — and they are also a distributed systems course that happens to describe a system you can go and run. Election and convergence, routing with no central authority, codec design, transport adaptation under real degradation, tuple spaces back to Gelernter and Carriero in 1985: each is a lecture somewhere, and here they are one system that has to make them work together. Students and self-teachers are welcome to take all of it and owe nothing. If you are here to learn → · If a chapter reads badly, tell me →
Shorter reads.
Standalone pieces that go deep on one idea — pulled from the books or written alongside them.
The Thirteen Shifts
The 1969 assumptions FrogNet replaced, one by one — the spine of How to Think Like a Frog.
Read → EssayREST vs UnREST
Why request-reply leaves the wire idle, and what it looks like to exchange memory instead.
Read → CaseUGV Swarm Autonomy
FrogNet under the hardest load: coordinating autonomous ground vehicles over narrow, flaky links.
Read → ArticleThe Starve Test
Starve the link until everything else breaks — and watch what keeps running.
Read → For devsUnREST Programming Models
Write the values, not the plumbing — the shapes an application takes on a tuple space.
Read → OverviewThe Living Network
Split, merge, elect, re-form — the network as something that stays alive through failure.
Read → CaseFrogNet for FarSight UGVs
Vehicle autonomy in the customer's own language: every vehicle sees the same operational picture, and a sensor found by one is available to all.
Read → AnnouncementThe Starve Test — announcement
The short form of the result, written to be forwarded: what was starved, what survived, and why it matters.
Read → WalkthroughInstall Steps
Config and setup end to end, finishing on a node that reboots into a running FrogNet and is discovered on its own.
Read → WalkthroughDiscovery Steps
What happens after the node comes up — how it finds the network it belongs to and is assimilated into it.
Read → ReferenceHardware Drawings
The physical side: what a node is built from, how it is wired, and what connectivity looks like before any software runs.
Read →The pages you keep a finger in.
The build manual's appendices, linked directly, plus print-ready copies of both books. Everything free.
Command & Helper Reference
Every command, helper, daemon, and file the book uses, grouped by the job it does.
Appendix DREST, the Drop-In, and UnREST
One system through three stages, with first-order numbers — the adoption argument in full.
Appendix EGlossary
The working vocabulary of the whole stack — Pond, Chorus, DatabaseHost, UnREST, SotF — in one place.
Magnum Croakus — DOCX
The full build manual as a document. Open in Word and print or save as PDF.
Read onlineHow to Think Like a Frog
The paradigm book, in the browser. Networking for the 21st century.
AccessThe stack & build manual
Request a free developer license and I'll send you access and the manual.
Free to read · free to build on
Read the books. Then build on it.
Both volumes are free. When you're ready to run FrogNet, a developer and personal-use license is free too — a commercial license covers you in production.