Don't worry about the 1GB download of Contiki. What they have done is bundled the whole of Contiki and all the tools you need to build and develop for it into a Ubuntu image that you can run on a virtual machine.
That's because generally people don't have all the GCC cross compilers and stuff required to build programs for all the different micro processors they support. Also makes such development possible on Windows.
The actual Contiki you end up running on your micro is very small. Like, the big ones run on the C64 !
In an Ethernet network, if one client is operating at a slower line speed, the higher level protocols are designed to accommodate this. You could theoretically drop packets all over the floor, but the protocol developers realized that you have to feel out the network to determine how fast you can transfer data. This results in the first few packets being exchanged much less efficiently than packets sent during the middle of the stream.
Comments
Don't worry about the 1GB download of Contiki. What they have done is bundled the whole of Contiki and all the tools you need to build and develop for it into a Ubuntu image that you can run on a virtual machine.
That's because generally people don't have all the GCC cross compilers and stuff required to build programs for all the different micro processors they support. Also makes such development possible on Windows.
The actual Contiki you end up running on your micro is very small. Like, the big ones run on the C64 !