Are you claiming a fruit fly runs a telecom network?

No. This is bio-inspired, not a literal claim. A brain and a carrier network independently solve the same engineering problem — reliable signal routing across a massive distributed system with no central controller — so the connectome is a useful lens, not a network controller.

What is observability in a network context?

Observability is the ability to see the full topology plus live telemetry — node health, link load and latency — in real time. Without it you have blind spots; failing elements look identical to healthy ones. You cannot manage what you cannot see.

What is orchestration in a network context?

Orchestration is coordinating the whole network in real time: rerouting traffic around failures (self-healing mesh) and reshaping flow under load with QoS and gain-control — so the system keeps its promises without a human in every decision.

Why does this matter for satellite and NTN?

Non-terrestrial networks (satellite constellations, high-altitude platforms) have links that change by the minute and short operating windows. Self-healing reroute and real-time orchestration move from convenience to necessity there.

What connectome data is real here?

The Neuroglancer viewer streams the public FAFB v14 fruit-fly brain EM volume — the actual imagery the FlyWire whole-brain connectome (Nature, 2024) was reconstructed from. The network diagram beside it is a stylised, bio-inspired illustration, not fly data.

Observability · Orchestration · Showcase

A brain and a network solve the same problem.

Route signals reliably across a massive distributed system — with no central controller, no tolerance for downtime. The fully-mapped fruit-fly connectome is a masterclass in it. So is a carrier network. NETAVON builds the two things that make either one work: observability and orchestration.

To be clear: this is bio-inspired, not a claim that a fly runs a network. Two very different systems converged on the same solution to the same hard problem — so the connectome is a useful lens, not a controller.

Interactive · two lenses

See it. Then steer it.

A stylised small-world mesh — like the connectome, wired for short paths and fault tolerance. Switch lenses and drive it.

Bio-inspired · stylised

Toggle to reveal the blind spots.

Telemetry OFF — the network runs, but you are flying blind. Failing nodes look identical to healthy ones. You can’t manage what you can’t see.

1 · Observability

Toggle telemetry off and the network still runs — but every node looks the same and failures hide in plain sight. Toggle it on and the full topology, per-node health and live link load appear. Degrading elements light up before they take the service down.

You can’t manage what you can’t see.

Real telecom parallel: streaming telemetry, anomaly correlation across layers, and predictive fault detection — so incidents don’t surprise you.

2 · Orchestration

Fail a hub and traffic recomputes its paths across the surviving mesh — a self-healing network, the way a brain routes around damage. Flood the core and gain-control / QoS throttles bulk traffic while protecting priority flows, reshaping load in real time.

Coordinate the whole network, live.

Real telecom parallel: automated rerouting, scaling and healing across the estate — critical for satellite constellations and NTN, where links change by the minute.

The real thing

Not a metaphor. The actual connectome.

The diagram above is stylised. This is real: the fruit-fly brain, streamed into Neuroglancer — the same open-source WebGL viewer connectomics labs use. The FlyWire team mapped every neuron and connection in this volume (Nature, 2024); in 2026 a Google Research, Janelia and Cambridge collaboration published the complete male Drosophila brain. It is the best-mapped distributed router we have.

Real data

The FAFB fruit-fly brain in Neuroglancer — Google’s open-source connectomics viewer.

Open in Neuroglancer ↗

Viewer: Neuroglancer (open source, Google — github.com/google/neuroglancer). Dataset: FAFB v14, the full adult female Drosophila brain EM volume that the FlyWire connectome was traced from. Publicly hosted; no login.

Grounded, not hand-wavy

The properties are real on both sides.

Small-world topology

Connectome: mostly local wiring plus a few long-range links, so any two neurons are a short hop apart. Network: exactly how resilient meshes and backbones are laid out — short paths, no single spine.

Sparse coding

Connectome: most neurons stay quiet; a small active set carries the signal, saving energy. Network: capacity is finite; good design keeps the common case light and reserves headroom for what matters.

Distributed routing

Connectome: no CEO neuron — routing is local and emergent. Network: modern control planes push decisions to the edge instead of one brittle central controller.

Fault tolerance

Connectome: lose neurons and function degrades gracefully, not catastrophically. Network: self-healing reroute keeps the service up when a node or link dies.

Sources — FlyWire whole-brain connectome, Nature (2024); complete male Drosophila brain, Cell / Google Research, Janelia & Cambridge (2026, research.google blog); Neuroglancer, open source (github.com/google/neuroglancer). The interactive network above is a stylised illustration, not fly data. No metrics or client names on this page are invented.

What NETAVON does with this

We build the seeing and the steering.

NETAVON designs and runs observability and orchestration for telecom, satellite, NTN, government and large enterprise networks — the two disciplines this whole page is about, applied to systems that cannot go down. We come at it from a telecom background, so we start from operations and work back to the AI.

Let’s talk — book a call Read the full write-up →

Companion interactive demo: yprateek.com.