Applied Energistics 2 - Advanced Channels Tutorial 

After 3-4 hours earlier watching people explain P2P tunnels, yours is the absolute best one by miles. Thank you.

Can't believe being ridiculously more complex actually made it seem significantly more simple.

8 years later and this is still the best ae2 tutorial ive seen

One clarification: When you crouch-right-click a source Tunnel with a Memory Card, you CAN right-click on as many destination Tunnels as you like, not just four. The number four comes from how many fully loaded basic cables can use the 32 channels the source Tunnel provides (8 each). But if each destination Tunnel is only being used for a single channel, there could be 32 separate destination Tunnels attached to the same source Tunnel. (Trying to associate more than 32 would be pointless, since there are at max 32 channels available.) Of course, using only one channel per Tunnel will use up all the channels a Dense Cable provides-for only one source Tunnel. It's not recommended to do this sort of extreme over-use.

9 years and it is still the easiest-to-follow tutorial i’ve found for AE2. Nice work!

everytime i forget how to do the ME controller. I always look for this video. He explains it perfectly.

5 years later and this is the best ae2 channel tutorial

Well after all this years I use AE2, I finally found how to effectively build complex me system. Great work, sir!

Posted four years ago and it is still relevant today. Very well thought out. Clearly explained. Great details. Thank you.

I would just like to say that even to this day I still refer to your video to understand how P2P tunnels work in AE2. You explain it so well and make it understandable.

Your voice OMG :) you should be a narrator

Already knew the jists of the mod, but you totally just helped me figure out everything else I was missing and thinking in my head "why cant I do this to this...." Huge help! Thanks again

Absolutely brilliant! This was really the most hilarious, yet most comprehensive and enlightening tut on Channels and Tunnels I have seen. Sensible, though not necessarily sane, this has given me a lot to ponder :) Thank you very much for boggling my mind, Nonsanity.

Brilliant Formatting and Excellent execution, You in 32 minutes managed to help me understand the channels and P2P than what 48 hours of googling did.

hey man, just wanted to let you know that this video was beyond helpful. I had just changed from ae1 and its so different and just couldn't wrap my head around ae2 for some reason watched many videos before yours and they weren't as well explained or broken down in the genius way that you do. Do wanted to just give you a shout out and a huge thank you!

This tutorial is the easiest to understand AND the most complex at the same time, keep it up you really helped me out

6 years later and this tutorial is still great

This was really helpful and I never even thought about using a separate controller to guide the channels through. Makes for much better cable management.

Watching these videos in 1.25x and/or 1.5x speed makes it so much more bearable. Very helpful tutorials, just a little slow at normal speed.

Thanks for making this! I've been playing with AE2 in my modpacks for years, and never fully understood the system. You really helped!

hi nonsanity. you really need to do more tutorials as you have an excellent abillity to teach in a precise and clear way. I will share your vids with friends that play modded minecraft. thanks again 😃

I'm trying to learn tunnels. I've watched a half dozen guides/tutorials/spotlights and everyone has 2 ME controller hooked into their network with no explanation, you can't have 2 controllers on one network, I'm so incredibly confused at this point. 5:00 you call it your transport network, everything makes sense now. Subbed, liked and recommending this video. Thank you.

4 years old and still useful, great tutorial.

Best tutorial I have ever watched Hands down. Though I started to get lost the more complicated the setups got :) I'll have to watch those over again. But I got more out of this tutorial than any other Ae2 channel tutorial I've watched.

Still very usefull after 9 years. Only used refined storage due to it's simplicity but with this i can start using ae2 because i finally understand the p2p system. Thank you!

You sir are a wizard. I turned this on, because a new device I attached to the network made it crash... but what I saw here spawned a great deal of respect for you for working this out, and for the mod creator. And shared on FB. None of my FB friends play minecraft, but hey, if it DOES help you in any way.. You earned it :D P.S. You got a very good voice and demeanor for making those movies. Well done ^^

7 years later and this still helps

these kind of tutorials dont exist anymore thank you

I built the practical version (around the 27 minute mark) and it has proven to be super useful. Thank you for the layout!

You’ve just cured a serious head ache with this video thank you so much!

this by far has to be the best ae2 tutorial i have ever seen, thank you very much sir. hope to see more from you again soon.

This makes so much more sense now. Thank god i watched this before i just threw all my ME cables away for dense cable.

Probably the best tutorial I've watched 2015.

Best video out there to cover this topic. Finally I understand channels and their relationship with other parts! Thanks so much (2021 almost yay!)

i know this is old but you helped and you have a real talent for explaining things and narration.

Probably one of the best AE2 channels tutorial video out there, congratulations!

Thanks, your the only one who explained the mechanics properly.

If it's possible to understand more and be more confused at the same time, you just did it hehe.. I'll be re-watching this a few times I'm sure, but it's a brilliant explanation.

Amazingly well made video. From content, how it was laid out to the viewer in easy to understand steps, to the way you paced it both contentwise aswell as speed of speech. Bonus points for your voice too! :)

direwolf21

Great tutorial! Could you put all the AE2 tutorials in a playlist? I'm trying to watch them in order of beginner -> advanced, but they're a little difficult to locate.

Wow, finally I understand AE2 channels. Thank you so much!

Fantastic tutorial... I was very unsure about certain aspects of channels and p2p tunnels.. You explained it reall well and well spoken.. I will highly recommend and pass on this link to anyone who ever is in doubt about channels. I think I will actually use the 7x7 huge controller setup for my new void base. Never knew I could have that many channels available! :) Keep up the good work.

You sir, I tip my hat to you. As this video went on I was thinking "he's barely started and gone past everything I know, where is he going with this?" I am simply blown away by this. Simply one of the best AE2 (controller set up/P2P) tutorials out there!!! I cannot even comprehend that monstrosity and I saw the pic!!

Thanks for the video! I think I finally understand channels now! I just started with AE2 and I feel like I'm completely lost. I was just starting to get the hang of AE last month and now I have to learn AE2! I've played around in creative and got basic auto crafting and stuff like that to work but I've been having trouble setting up automatic pulverizers and redstone furnaces like I used to in AE. I always end up running out of channels. I think I'm making my rows to long. I need to make shorter rows of the machines with dense cables.

even tho its now 2 years since this video was uploaded its still the one and only im looking for when i start rethinking how it was done. thank you again

Best clear and concise explanation I have seen

"Lets cube it" My mouth dropped... lol. AMAZING WORD DUDE! I now now the way I was doign the pipes was SOOOO wrong. Thank you!!!!!!

thank you and subscribed. Thorough, and simply explained. I shall be checking out the rest of your videos.

This is probably the best AE2 P2P video I've seen, thanks for making it!

Thanks a lot for this video. I try a thousand times to use more than 4 P2P tunnels on a cable. This will help me

I know this was posted about three and a half years ago, but at 15:46 you said that if there was a way to tell which P2P tunnels are connected to each other, you'd love to find out about it. The mod AE2 Stuff adds an item called "Network Visualization Tool" and one of its modes is to show P2P links

one of the best videos out there so far which i found on that topic and i will try to explain why. i just started with ae2 looking for a reason why 2 me controller would be neede... ok i got that answer somewhat. but i am defenatly more confused now than i was befor :D but in a good way this video was a fantastic piece of information with nice recording quality sound and video wise very clear about what you are talking about not stumbling around like some unexperienced teacher are even tho they try to share information and try to help people which is a good thing. but it helps when in your case you own the information and are not confused yourself. so whats left to say i would say this is one of the best videos out there so far which i found on that topic thank you for this masterpiece of tutorial video even tho my brain went mental on that topic after getting all the information which lead to imagination and posibilitys im already thinking about how many parallel machines would still bring some speed to the system without beeing many just for the sake of beeing many. for example what about 64 massfabricator from ic2 or 128 .. how many are actually needed to be faster at producing something i just took out of the system and on the flipside how much energy is needed to make that happen. some kind of a creative mode machine which turns sunlight into magic :) for sure my head is spinning so thank you for the confusion it defenatly helped me alot. and of course this video will be the first i will mention to people who are in search of answers about that topic. cheers

I went ahead and built the monstrosity I described at the end of the video. You can see a picture of it here: nonsanity.com/x/ae2-monstrosity-1.png

This is fantastic! It’s essentially QinQ or MPLS/VPLS VMANS for Minecraft :D

I don't know if you know anything about audiobooks, but you sound a hell of a lot like Sam Tsoutsouvas. Also amazing tutorial, thanks for providing quality content like this!

Great video! Finally understand how to build big with AE 2

This is a really good video in regards to dealing with getting as many channels as possible on a main network and using transport layer networks. You do a great job describing everything and making most things clear and easy to understand. But I feel like the lack of anything addressing the many uses of subnetworks as channel usage mitigation use is a fairly big oversight. The two really go hand in glove. (I'll have to check if you have any other videos on that topic.) Subnets are especially great for storage. For example, if you haven't heard of the "Super Soaryn Drive" you should check out his great design. It's an infinitely expandable storage subsystem that uses one single channel on the main network to store anything and everything in as many drives as you want. Did I mention infinitely expandable? Or one channel? I like how you call the transport networks "extension cords". That made me grin. 8:30 - I'm pretty sure data goes through an energy acceptor though. See how the transport network on the right only shows one channel going through the longer stretch of cable between the P2P tunnel parts? Each one is only talking to the controller, via the energy acceptor. That entire length of cable would show up as using two channels from end to end if it was disconnected from the controller. (Speaking of which... If anyone is running tunnels through a LONG distance cable and is concerned about keeping power consumption as low as possible, be aware that putting a controller somewhere in between the ends may potentially reduce power usage, if the halving of power cost for transmission per channel per block of cable is a greater savings than the flat rate of power use by the controller - or on the other hand, you could run twice as many tunnels through the same basic fluix cable for the same power cost plus the controller's usage.) 10:22 - "No ME controller can have more than three neighbors touching it" is an inaccurate paraphrase of rule three. There are arrangements in which you can have four neighbors. You used all twelve of them in your big cube controller design, at the center of each edge. For example, one on the left, right, top, and front. Or top, bottom, front, and right. You just can't have two axes with two neighbors each like a plus or cross shape, as you mentioned. There are other ways to work around that rule, of course, leading to some creative and artistic shapes when people don't need to worry about power consumption. :) 12:00 - "If I want a fifth one over here, I can't" - You talked about how to do so around 30:40 - and I see you addressed the confusion over that in a comment. I'm editing some stuff out here, but leaving this part in case someone wants a reference to the times. Your wall of drives is a great example of the shortest path algorithm used to allocate channels to devices. You can also achieve that effect with a row of P2P tunnels. There are some other good examples of how it works and other options on the AE2 site's wiki. There's a ton of useful information there for anyone new to AE2, or looking to get better at using it. Finally, I think there's an important distinction to make, especially for viewers who might be having trouble understanding how AE2 channels work: Right at the start you said "basic cable provides 8 channels" and also suggested that it "creates" them somehow. This seems rather misleading to me. What you're talking about here - devices hooked together without a controller - are called "ad-hoc networks". The cables themselves do nothing but carry signals from the devices, and the normal size cables just can't carry more than eight signals to and from eight devices simultaneously. (Any explanation for that deeper than "because the developer wanted more interesting and challenging network design" is speculation verging on technobabble, but we can think of it as a matter of too much interference between distinct signals, or anything else that helps wrap our brains around it.) The eight device limit on ad-hoc networks exists because they actually function differently: With no controller to act as a central switchboard and determine how signals are routed, each device broadcasts to the entire network and every other device on it (whether it technically needs to talk to that device or not). They don't have a unique destination to send their transmissions to, so they send them everywhere, and every piece of cable on the network has to support enough channels to allow all of that communication. That's why all eight of those cables at the start show 8 of 8 channels used, in contrast to a controller network where the last cable in each row of devices only has to carry one channel, the next carries two, and so on. (And, of course, a controller simply disables any device to which it can't allocate a channel, rather than allowing the entire line of cable or the entire network to shut down the way an overloaded ad-hoc network does.) I'm not aware of any restriction preventing you from connecting different portions of an ad-hoc network together using dense cable (and you can even bridge an ad-hoc network through a P2P tunnel if you really want to, for that matter) - there just isn't any benefit to giving it that extra capacity, since it doesn't raise the device limit. Because full block-size devices act as "basic" ME fluix cable (not dense, as you mentioned), and parts like terminals and buses must also be attached to that normal sized cable, the 8 channel limit of that cable effectively extends to all devices on an ad-hoc network without regard to what other connection methods may link them together. (For instance, attaching eight drives directly to P2P adapters and then adding a ninth hooked up to an Interface to allow I/O, all of which are full blocks, would theoretically allow the nine devices to communicate through the 32 channel capacity of the tunnel - but each of those nine devices still broadcasts to all of the others through that link, overloading their signalling capacity and shutting them all down, since each device on the network would have to handle a total of 9 channels. Connecting them via dense cable would have the same result.) With a controller to organize things, each device only has to communicate with one other - that one device being the controller itself. Its signals are routed along the shortest path to the controller and vice versa. (And yes, that means ME fluix cable apparently has some kind of inherent signal routing capability. Which might make sense, if you assume it also acts like a repeater for those signals, also explaining the increasing power needs per channel per block of cable.) The result is a logical tree that can have some very widely spread branches, depending on how your cables and tunnels are attached. And as long as each individual segment of cable can carry enough channels to support all the devices trying to communicate through it at that particular point, everything is fine. Sadly, looking at the "leaves" of such a branch doesn't tell you whether the "trunk" end of it has any free channels, so the only way to find out is to go look at the right piece of cable. You could just add a device and see if it comes online, but even if it does, you might find that something farther away from the controller along that branch just went offline. This helps to explain how P2P (Point To Point) tunnels work, as well, for anyone not familiar with the concept: They simply package up distinct transmissions on different channels into a special format (you could think of it like making a ZIP file containing multiple other files) which is sent to the linked device as a single bundle and then decoded back into its original constituents. The tunnel devices themselves only requires one channel, since that packaged format is only being transmitted from one device to another - although if the tunnels aren't running on an ad-hoc network like the first transport networks you showed, then the data path technically includes a detour to the controller even if the two ends of the P2P connection are just a few blocks apart along the same line of cable. Think of how a simplified postal service would work - a bunch of letters sent from one city get put into a box together, the box is labeled with the address of another city, taken to that city (somehow), opened, and all the individual letters are pulled out and sent to their destinations. Each letter is a transmission from a different home or business, but the mail centers each have their own individual addresses, and you can think of the shipment of the box of letters as a single transmission too. If there were more letters than one mail center could handle in a day, then you'd need a second mail center with its own address at each end, and so on.

So I already built that 7x7x7 monster thing in my world without watching this video. I didn't build that exact design though. This video made me realize that I have to connect all of the transport ME controllers and I might be screwed when it comes to P2P finding unless the network visualization tool from AE2 stuff will save me.

Hm, kinda mindblowing! Best Tutorial about tunneling i´ve seen so far. Do you think the coder of AE2 really thought about that useability you´re showing in the screenshot? I mean: the 7x7x7 setup of ME Controllers is written there on the wiki but... Did he ever thought about using this with "the force of tunneling"? :D Thanks for the really nice Tutorial! What i forgot: If u use the "name the memory card" version for the inner connections: Just add the facing info after the coords in the anvil. There won´t be two tunnels facing "north", or "west" at the same coords. This is normally shown if you use F3 :) Best regards, Keep

Superb video. You explain things very well. Now I need to go and rip out all my wiring!

best channel explanation ever - so many possibilities.

This tutorial made me understand everything i need

In the mod "AE2 Stuff" there's a Network Visualizer tool. it shows the P2P connections as thick lines between the P2P tunnels

network novice here but your vids are helping, thanks bud.

A lot of help explaining the p2p tunnels

I finally figured a way to keep track of my tunnels w/o signs. I just give them group designations through an anvil.

thanks Nonsanity. Excellent breakdown.

Everything is now clear haha thank you very much.

I've really enjoyed this informative video. Great explenation on every aspect. Thanks!

around the 15:30 mark you are talking about there is no tool tip etc to see what that tunnel belongs to. you can tell, just throw a pair of tunnels in an anvil and rename them, as a pair. that does show in the tooltip.

Very good tutorial, thank you! I'm probably good with your first 13 minutes for my needs though :D I really appreciate your straight use with the colors, makes it way better to understand. Will Fav this one :)

Thank you just Thank you!!!

Thanks Helped me understand P2P Tunneling thanks!

No dislikes! Wow! :D This tutorial has been very useful!

Excellent tutorial! Keep it up man!

Thanks for the help man, Cheers Fixed my whole Setup

This tutorial is great!! The best one on youtube.

Actually if you do it right, controllers can have 4 neighbors, the rule is that according to the author, the controller blocks can't have more than one axis with controllers on both sides. So if it has one neighbor in the x, and two in the y, and one in the z, it's fine. But it can't have two in the x and y or x and z, you get the idea.

This was pretty helpful. I'm not ashamed to say that I've been binge watch a lot of your videos. I'm really impressed by all this logistical wizardry, especially since I'm terrible at it. I have a couple of questions, if you don't mind. First is, can you upgrade storage drives that have stuff into them? Like, can you remove your items from them, or does it not matter if they stay in the drive when you craft with them? If you can craft with them. Second question I have is about power. That last setup you showed (the 7x8 ME drives + attachments) is probably something I'll use on my current server, but I've been relying mostly on solar panels and wind turbines for power. Should I make a Big Reactor? If so, what size should I make it so I don't have to worry about power? Lastly, is there a good way to wirelessly transmit power? Is the tesseract from Ender IO what I'm looking for here? Oh, and can this 7x8 ME Drive set up be wirelessly connected to someplace, like say if I put it in the basement of a tall building and needed access to the network at the top?

Thank you so much! Tunnels made no sence before.

Hey Nonsanity, Wow what a video, your voice in these is just the perfect one. Clean, relaxed and know what you are talking about! good job! but and here is my question: I cant seem to get power into the main 2 dense cables (your orange/magenta) so my p2p tunnels wont get online. how did you do that? im using the same setup as you

Excelent tut! Cheers from Brazil

very good video, really good explanation and most importantly, simple. This helped me a lot, XD

Your tutoriel is very very great ! Thanks dude, beacause in french language we have lot of shitty tutorials xD In english is always better x)

Stanley walked through the door on the right.

clear, well explained, nice job, u get a French sub ^^

Algorithm really should have named the P2P Tunnels as P2P Hubs instead. The best analogy I can come up with to explain P2P Tunnels are USB Hubs which use only one USB port but then can support multiple devices off that single port.

Right clicking with a quartz cutting knife, placing an ingot into the menu, typing the name you want, placing that press into an inscriber, and placing the memory card into the middle slot will rename the item and the name press is reusable. Doesn’t require levels either

that is one great tutorial. thanx for the video

That helped me quite alot sir. Thx you.

This guys voice is awesome

I just fiddled a little with this and figured how to get 5120 channels cramped into an area of just 6 deep 9 wide and 8 high :D

I have made myself a glass model of the main controller with signs attached telling which tunnel leads to which part of the base

So seriously: How often do you ever need THAT many channels? I have played modded for quite some time and loved automating stuff with AE2 but I never even came close to where I would have needed that many channels. In my current world I am only using 5 sides of my ME Controller, because my system is set up efficent enough. Am I missing something? Anyway, you explain(ed) it really good and since the mechanics of this mod haven't changed stuff is still up to date. Thanks for your work.

Hey , I just wanted to point some thing out, I didn't read the comments so I don't know if it has already been said BUT, Name the p2p tunnels with an anvil , I always name mine in pairs. 1,1 2,2 3,3 ect...

The insanity at about 24:30 got me thinking couldnt you use 2 ME controllers to connect to the cube and then have that "connecting system" go into a 3rd system that routes it around your base. I think you'd be able to transfer that entire cube with a single cable in this fashion which is nuts. So like you have system A it's the main system system B that "compresses" system A and then system C that routes system B around your base to be uncompressed and used at any point.

nice video man, thx for the help

Realy nice video and u explain very good. thx for the help. Hope u get manny likes :)

You say that u dont need that big machine! Well my friend You havent played with me :D Thanks for a great Tutorial :D