Pigeon Found to be Faster Than Broadband
What's next? BirdTorrent?
Carrier pigeons are an ancient way to transmit information. As we've seen in many movies, one would tie a small scrolled message to the leg of a pigeon before sending it flapping off to warn its recipient of impending danger.
Today we have much more modern and efficient ways to transmit information… or do we? If you're an internet user in South Africa on the Telkom ISP, you might have better results with the old ways.
A worker at a Durban IT company was very unhappy with the performance of Telkom's ADSL speed. As a result, he decided to pit a carrier pigeon armed with a 4 GB USB stick against a plain file transfer.
Winston the pigeon won.
By the time Winston reached his destination, only 4 percent of the file had transferred. The BBC report does not specify the full size of the file, but did say that Winston completed his journey in 1 hour and 8 minutes, while the internet transfer required an additional hour to complete.
ISP Telom said that it couldn't be held responsible for the slow transfer speeds to the IT company, as it has helped to advise the company in possible improvements, but thus far none have been accepted.
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So he needs to set up a network of carrier pigeons? How does he get his 1st pigeon back? Does he strap it to a 2nd different pigeon?
*starts collecting tons of pigeons*
Alright, I'll start seeding the latest Ubuntu build.
Wait, what? So the file was uploaded by only 4% in One hour 8 minutes, and the remaining 96% of the file needed only one hour to complete? That's some weird reliability.
I love this! Birds with USB keys... awesome! Do you need to plug it in or something?
What about packet collision between pigeons?
That is funny. I'm amused lol.
Wildlife FTW!
If I was the boss of that ISP I would walk around with a paper bag over my head, I doubt I could live with the shame of losing to centuries old technology.
Hmm a DDoS ... with pigeons ... that should be fun
Think we could mount a small SSD on one of those birdies? If so, we might have something there. Of course, if a pigeon gets lots, shot down, killed by a predator, etc... that amounts to a WHOLE lot of packet loss!
Pfft pigeon. You should see the download speed I get from my perigrine falcon!
slap in the face for that ISP, lol useless experiments like these are great.
This appeared on Wired.com hours ago with more info:
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/200 [...] -internet/
They say in the Wired bit that (including xfer of file to usb stick etc) that it took a total of 2 hours 6 minutes and 57 seconds and that by that time only 4% had been transferred. There had been no comment from Telkom at that time and they also do not indicate where the destination office is located. I would bet though that the 'improvement options' offered by Telkom would not help an infrastructure problem taht it is likely to be.
Be sure to feed the pigeons well and give them a dose of laxative before beginning the DDoS
Let the DDos begin [l](to the tune of Plop, plop, fiz, fiz, oh what a relief it is)[/l]
Break out the Umbrellas!
this is the website by the company who tested carrier pigeon ISP...
http://pigeonrace2009.co.za/
also has map route and much more information regarding the "race"...
I did find that it was between Howick and Durban but could not get Google to calculate the distance. Even so, using the scale and measuring, you'd get at least 30 miles maybe more like 40. In any case, that pigeon would have to fly at least 15 miles and hour to make it in the time indicated. Seems reasonable to me that it is accurate. But what I don't quite get is where the other hour came in exactly. we do know that they had to xfer the file to the stick which takes moments and then attach it to the pigeon. But did they have to drive somewhere else locally to do that...to send him off? And did they need to pick it up offsite at the other end? How does the pigeon know where his destination is?
This doesn't make sense....
Basic math please? 1 hour and 8 minutes to complete 4% but required an additional hour to complete. More like it requires 20 more hours!
The pigeon isn't faster than Broadband, that Pigeon is only faster than the server the file was being downloaded from. This is a useless argument.
Aparently its a 4GB file that was being transfered.
so im guessing the other hour was for upload and download of the file from the memory stick.
goto the website above and click on "pigeon race 2009"
546KB per second, not bad.
if you send 4 gigs at a time (on a key) and the bird doesn't get to destination: that a darn big packet lost to me lol
1 question can a pigeon run crysis online LAWL
The pigeon isn't faster than Broadband, that Pigeon is only faster than the server the file was being downloaded from. This is a useless argument.
But the infrastructure that those servers use to transfer data is the real bottleneck here. What they really need is an FIOS link since the article (one of them) mentioned that they do this everyday (xfer files that is, not necessarily by pigeon).
Nice idea. Personally I'm a fan of smoke signals.
Of course it's faster to send a hundred of completely full 2 TB hard drives via truck/car than via broadband. DUH!
Let's assume the file he was trying to transfer was the full 4GB. It took 68 minutes (4080 seconds) to transfer 4%, or 167772KB. That's about 41 KB/s - which is actually a faster upload rate than what most people get from their ISP. Telkom tries to blame the company, but it's actually the ridiculously low upload caps ISPs impose on their customers.
ha what a n00b every0ne knows an f18 is the easy and less expensive way to carry objects.
Broadband in South Africa sucks. It's expensive and slow. While Americans were getting upset about the possibility of getting capped by Time Warner,the average South African ADSL user has to live with having only 3GB per month. Most people can't even watch youtube without waiting forever for the movie to buffer. So even though this test may not prove anything real, the fact that someone would go through the trouble of using a bird instead of broadband just shows how much the broadband sucks.
This is hilarious. Makes me think the sci-fi tech of Johnny Pneumonic had it right. And also, before anyone asks ...NO, the pigeon can't play Crysis.
its entirely relative to the amount of data being transferred, If the File was 4GB and the bird that would relate to a about 1MB/s upload rate, but if you cut the data in half, it still takes the bird the same amount of time to get there, then you are looking at 512KB/s or so. If you keep halving the amount of data the bird travelling gets less and less efficient compared to the internet. Try sending the bird with the printout of a page of a word document, and try e-mailing it as an attachment at the same time. The bird stands no chance in that instance. Its basically the same thing as Chevrolet claiming a certain 230 miles to the gallon on the chevy volt, but only if you drive a certain distance, and on a full charge.
So that classifies Pigeons as UDP Datagram packets then. Not guarenteed delivery and possibly out of order if there were multiple packets.
I read this on: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/ [...] broadband/
I laughed ...and... then I rememberd my ISP
Nice idea. Personally I'm a fan of smoke signals.
They could also try bouncing a laser beam off of a mirror on the moon to the other office.
So that classifies Pigeons as UDP Datagram packets then. Not guarenteed delivery and possibly out of order if there were multiple packets.
And I dare not ask how long it would take for the receiving office to request a resubmission of a lost packet. though the order of the packets does not matter as they should be numbered. The transport layer (schmoe in the office) should make sure that it has all packets before attempting to assemble them. This is independant of the physical layer (the pigeon). Still, imagine what might happen to these packets that wouldn't happen to an electronic packet...like getting picked off by an eagle (if they have them there) or hawk, even an aircraft perhaps. Call it 'interference'.