The transfer protocol now proposed is staggeringly simple. It is that quantum waves are passed on as soon as they are received, so they spread like ripples in a pool. A pebble that falls onto a pool pushes the water down until it rebounds, and that up-down displacement spreads as ripples on its surface. Likewise, a photon starting on a quantum network surface is also an up-down displacement passed on, giving the quantum ripples we call light.
If quantum waves are processing waves, each point involved has to do two things: run the process and pass it on. One might expect it to run the process first then pass it on but to avoid transfer losses, it is better to pass the processing on as soon as it is received. The pass-it-on protocol is then that any processing received is passed on immediately, to ensure that it isn’t lost.
If a transfer sent to a point waited for it to finish what it was doing, the speed of light would vary for the same route, but it doesn’t. This implies that each transfer is received as an interrupt, which in computing is a signal that has priority over anything else a processor is doing. For example, in Windows, pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del keys together interrupts the CPU to run the Task Manager.
The pass-it-on protocol essentially prioritizes transfers over anything else, so the speed of light is constant because light waves are always immediately passed on. Light spreading throughout the universe also helps synchronize the network, despite it being decentralized. The effect isn’t perfect, but light interrupting points everywhere at a constant rate increases synchrony.
A weakness of this protocol is that transfers in a circle would give an endless interrupt loop that reduces processing, like the deadlock loop earlier. Fortunately, space expanding mitigates this, as new points of space have nothing to do for their first cycle. This reduces the loop build-up, but that a halo of light circles the galaxy center could explain dark matter (4.7.6).
In this protocol, nothing ever waits, so it is efficient, no transfers are lost, so it is reliable, and quantum waves are generated, so it is effective. It works well but if it did fail, even for a moment, not only our universe, but also its evolution, would be gone forever. The only recovery then would be to restart another universe from scratch.