Pigeon transmits data faster than leading South African internet provider
By Thomas Ricker 
posted Sep 10th 2009 7:45AM
posted Sep 10th 2009 7:45AM
[Thanks, Ugotamesij]
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Yeah, but what are the bandwidth caps for pigeons?
A 5 ounch pigeon could carry a one pound memory stick
A homing pigeon can carry, on average, between 30 and 50 grams.
Assuming an 16GB MicroSD card weighs about 1 gram, the pigeon can carry a maximum of 800GB of data.
Assuming a 20MB/s transfer rate for the SD card, it will take about 11hours to 'fill up' the pigeon, and another 11 to 'empty' it.
Therefore, in one day, a pigeon can transport 800GB about 100 miles.
Therefore, the montly bandwidth cap of a pigeon is about 24TB for people living within 100miles of the nearest hub.
Pretty awesome, though i think latency might be an issue.
yeah but mitigating packet loss would be a bitch....especially during dove season.
I'm just wondering where Dick Dastardly fit into all this...
the big question is - can two pigeons carry a coconut?
Well sure, an African Pigeon... but a European Pigeon, no way!
But what if someone uploads a worm into my pigeon?
I really like it when someone takes the time to work out the bandwidth capacity of a pigion, makes me laugh
@hello: A little addition to your calculations:
Assume a month with 30 days, that are 720 hours in a month.
100miles(about 1270194km) flying takes 24hours and copying the data with a ransfer rate of 20MB/s would take 22hrs. => 46Hr (without changing the cards and catching the pigeons)
=> 800Gb/46Hr => 12,5TB/month => 417,4Gb/day => 40525,5kb/s!!!
But! => 0.00483102GB/s, hmm.. still not that awesome as the 24 samsung SSD drives :(
Maybe we canlet 2 pigeons do the work? Because 1+1=3, that means that 2 pigeons toghether can do more than 2 pigeons on their own. hmm.. :)
Forget Glass Fiber, use pigeons :D
(thanks to convertbot from the appstore :p)
I would be worried somewhat about security, I mean, all those hackers with trained falcons sniffing in on the packets. I think they should combine PigeonNet with Quantum Key Distribution by satellite. Best of both worlds.
I think engadget should start sending me their news via pidgeon! I really hate my telkom connection ='(
Whats with the highly ranked morons where they bag the people actually speaking about the real problems of south Africa it's not just because it's Africa it's because of this:
It is estimated that 500,000 rapes are committed annually in South Africa, and that for every 25 men accused of rape, only one is convicted of the crime. South Africa also has the world highest number of people living with HIV/AIDS: 5.5 million in a population of about 48 million.
So i wouldn't call it civilized probably one of the worst country's in Africa unless you want to live in the rape capital of the world. Theres also so many racial crimes going on their it's pretty horrible maybe watch the news or read a paper some time.
woops replied to the wrong person was meant to be down a bit
*sigh* So much we take for granted in industrialized countries, and still we bitch about how we want more.
That sucks for you , dear South African Engadget reader. Then again, internet bandwidth is probably not the biggest issue to solve in South Africa.
South Africa is an industrialized country ---- just because you see the word Africa.... U.S. really fail at geography.
His username may well imply that he's Russian.
I dunno, does carjacking count as an industry?
Or is that the child prostitutes?
Is internet bandwidth the biggest problem where you live?
Yeah, those damned prawns still need to be put in their places, and to show us how to use their weapons.
@upgeog I guess that you failed to learn how to write in complete sentences like the British taught you to.
SA exports diamonds and they sell weapons, and they have metals/minerals too.
But yeah I'd not call it a "modern" country either really, although when you think about it so many would fail my classification, if not all.
.
@M67A2 Flame Tank - Plus 1 to you sir, such an awesome movie!
are you suggesting memory cards migrate?
Well strapping a 4GB stick to a Pigeon isn't really a good indication of competing speed. They could've strapped a 16GB stick to the pigeon and it would've looked even worse, or probably would've bested real high speed.
Really what they should've done is loaded something like a 720p trailer onto one, and tested that. Streaming over the DSL vs the pigeon.
perhaps two pigeons carried it together
To be fair they should have had it carry one packet at a time.
The pigeon did carry a 4 GB packet
They wouldn't've needed two pigeons to carry to together if it was an African pigeon!
Not a European pigeon, that's your point, I presume.
But African pigeons are non-migratory.
@grammer police How would the pigeons attach the string to the memory card?
2 pigeons and 1 memory stick =/
@G
African pigeons must have Jumbo Frames support.
@NeoJew
Like this? http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1149.html
SneakerNet has been faster than any telecom channel since the beginnings of time.
You must live out in the sticks, I get 50MB in a relatively small town (20,000 peeps max) I'd do 1GB in less than 3 minutes.
But yeah UK internet (ADSL mainly) sucks, but I don't think as bad as above (80MB in over 2 hours!) for the vast majority.
+1 for Sneakernet, which in high volume transfers of information will beat any WAN.
You can for instance, pack an entire helicopter with data (while wearing sneakers) and ship it, then plug it in (still wearing the sneakers), long before any cable is going to do it. If you are talking fast cable, then the data volume being tested would be increased proportionally. The helicopter is for dramatic effect
As for the previous call for "fair testing" based on packets, well, perhaps it is a 4gig packet
In the example of 2gig in 10 min, well sure, so that's quicker than going to the video store (depending on distance and if you know what video you want) but at the video store you could pick up 10 DVD's for the week in the same time, where the cable is just going to take 10 times longer. Movie files are not so good as an example since there is no "load time" when you have finished transferring the data from one location to the other.
I remember my networking text at university describing how much bandwidth a speeding estate car (or station wagon, for US readers) packed with data tapes had when compared to a then modern computer network. These days I assume that police cars and speed traps would constitute "throttling"...
@Kelmon
Does that make a traffic jam full of station wagons a DDoS attack?
To be fair i'd be hard pressed to get more than 1GB in a 2 hour period on my connection which is the fastest available where i live in the UK, so pidgoen carrying for my data would be faster too.
A quick off-the-cuff calculation puts the data rate at about 182kbps for the guy in SA. That is really poor!
I'd like to see the test re-run with 10 million pigeons flying simultaneously to 10 million homes, to more accurately reflect the interwebs under South Africa.
THE SKIES THICK WITH PIGEONS!
And maybe each pigeon could drop a feather at each home, to test bittorrent, until South Africa is smeared with the blood and bones of 10 million pigeons.
This is not a spontaneous idea for you is it? There has been some significant pre thinking going on
Well it sure as heck wasn't pixi thinking going on.
And what about hackers? :D They can intercept data
Next time they should try to undertake pigeon DDoS attack.
Hitchcock-style?
If the pigeon gets eaten on the way, is that considered packet loss or "Connection Terminated" ?
Carrier lost, fits better :)
Carrier lost = Carrion gained!