The Knights

The Knights of the Eastern Calculus (often the Knights) is a group of pseudonymous, notorious and highly-skilled computer crackers.

They interact with Lain in various ways, possibly trying to trick her into entering The Wired or joining them iding the implementation of Protocol 7.

They use Taro to get to her. In some way, they are responsible for the use and distribution of the psyche chip, which somehow massively improves network performance despite being a CPU.

The mysterious organization is also presented as the creators or distributors behind many of the advanced computer-related devices include KIDS and Accela.

Trivia

 * The name of this organization is a reference to a well-known in-joke among the hacker community, that being the Knights of the Lambda Calculus. This was an organization whose membership was joking given out to hackers who work with the Lisp programming language. At one point in the anime, Lain is seen with code displayed on Navi device that appears to be Lisp.