Final answer:
When transferring a million-character message from node 0 to node 1, it would require multiple packets. The total number of characters sent would be the product of the number of packets and the number of characters per packet. To decrease the overhead, a more efficient network protocol can be used.
Step-by-step explanation:
When transferring a million-character message from node 0 to node 1, it would require multiple packets. Each packet can carry a certain number of characters, which varies depending on the network protocol being used. For example, if each packet can carry 1000 characters, it would take a total of 1000 packets to transfer the message.
To calculate the total characters sent in all packets, we multiply the number of packets (1000) by the number of characters per packet (1000), giving us a total of 1,000,000 characters.
The overhead in this case would be the additional data added to each packet for routing and error-checking. One way to decrease the overhead would be to use a more efficient network protocol that minimizes the amount of additional data added to each packet.