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Pigeons' Bandwidth Advantage Quantified
An anonymous reader submits "A well documented test took
place in the north of Israel, in presence of several dozen Internet geeks and
experts. During the test, 3 homing pigeons carried 4 GB (gigabytes) for 100 km
distance, achieving, what apparently looks as pigeons' world record in data
transfer to a given distance. Bandwidth achieved by the pigeons was 2.27
Mbps...Transferring a similar volume of information through a common uplink of
ADSL line would have taken no less than 96 hours..."
So essentially, we should unplug all the cables and just get a bunch of shithawks?
the DSL doesn't shit on my car.
2.27 Mbps = 0.28375 MBps
4 GB / 0.28375 MBps = 14097 secs
14097 secs = 3h 54Mins
100km / 3h 54Mins = 25.53 km/h
25.53 km/h = 15.86 mph
Not bad for laden little pigeons
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
the response time for packet loss is prohibitive... may as well get satellite
first post
Already?
12 gauge shotgun i'm applying for the patent right now
vodka, straight up, thank you!
There will be at least ten comments that say (even though it's a pigeon and not a swallow): "Was it African, or European?"
barzelay.net
the relevant rfc
To get a RAID on their backs....
I always thought there must be a better way than ADSL...
Fill up a cargo jet with full up hard drives and I'd bet you get really good bandwidth.
It's a truism within the London-based Post-production industry (pretty much all located within a square mile of Soho, central London) that the bandwidth of a bunch of RAID arrays in a transit van is pretty much unbeatable, even with the fast networks that post-houses have between themselves... transferring physical media used to be called 'sneakernet' when walking across the room, it's just been scaled up slightly
I'm quite impressed that a pigeon can do 100km in 2.5 hours though, I had no idea they were *that* fast...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
In a pinch you can't eat your cable modem.
Finally, I can start implementing my MORSE OVER IP OVER PIGEON CARRIER protocol stack!!
DrkBr
That's it, I'm switching to PSL. (Pigeon Subscriber Line)
"What is the average velocity of a data-laden pigeon . . ."
A 5 ounce bird cannot carry a 4 GB coconut!
- A
You'd lose both a huge amount of your data and your only connection should something happen to those pigeons. Still, it's more reliable than AOL.
"You should never doubt what nobody is sure about." -- Willy Wonka
/greger
It looks like the final barrier to widespread internet access in the Palestinian quasi-state has been surmounted.
Insert obligatory joke here about "dropping packets"....
Who is General Failure? And why is he reading my disk????
You forgot to mention about the latency!
The bandwidth might be good, but the latency stinks... just try playing networked Quake 3 over that!
Features:
The PigeonDistro is developed to maximize the advantage of free an accesible deployment solution.
"I was able to upgrade 2000 machines in less than 12 hours. Only 10 of those hours where cleaning the floors."
I feel sorry for the pigeon who needs to be hashed on the other end to check if it's the same one... that's gotta hurt.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
...African, or European?
From what I undertood, they splited
the information into 3 bits and
charged each pigeon with a bit, so
infact they only transferred 3 bits.
Try wiretapping that you FBI bitches
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I can throw 10,000 DVDs in my trunk, and drive 100km in an hour. Would that be considered "great bandwidth"? Besides, if they can use 3 pigeons, why not compare it to 3 DSL lines?
up in here? Why?
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
A quote (more or less) from the Computer Networks book I used in college by Tannenbaum goes something like this:
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon hurtling down the road with a bunch of tapes"
is the bandwith capacity of a laden swallow
3h 54Mins
Ping time is twice that. Doh!
If I had something intelligent to say, I would have said it.
Now if I can train my pets to fetch me playboys from local 7-11s, I am as good as without broadband.
Is it already April 1st somewhere?
I wonder if the Bongo Drums could compete
These Israeli pigeons sound like wimps. Our local Philly pigeons could easily carry my 160GB hard drive or a small child but probably not one of our local rats.
Pony Internet Express?
This is Israel we're talking about, the US sponsored terrorist state. How long til they start strapping bombs on the pigeons, to attack their neighbors?
We need to boot Israel out of there. They do not belong.
64 bytes from pigeon: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.030 ms
64 bytes from pigeon: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.024 ms
64 bytes from pigeon: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.025 ms
64 bytes from pigeon: icmp_seq=4 Destination Host Unreachable
we replace those tiny 4 GB memory cards with 1.44 MB floppies. Lets see how far those flying rats get with 4 GB of floppies attached to their frickin' heads.
That's all fine and good if you know where you're sending your packets. But what if you have to do a DNS look up? Then you have to send several scout pigeons to the nearest aviary which will in turn send a pigeon back with a map of where to send your data pigeons.
And there's a whole other issue with those bastard Verisign Pigeons, but I'm not going to get into that now.
There's also a risk of packet sniffers who use various means to down your pigeons and read your data (no router protection).
And if they do happen to down your pigeon, they can give it new data and send it on its way as if it came from your IP (iniating pigeon). WATCH OUT CREDIT CARDS!
The solution of course is to use Pretty Good Pigeons to protect your data.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
The latency sucks
I doubt birds are as reliable or as secure as networks. Imagine your bird falling into the wrong hands. I would guess that the average bandwidth would go down quite a bit when packet loss is accounted for.
It sure is well documented. Ami Ben-Bassat's Blog has always been one of the most trusted sources for scientific data.
_____
Thank you.
tomorrow already?
What is that in Library of Congress'?
can we now rate MBps in MPH?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Just got the timing slightly wrong though, two minutes before it became April 1st by GMT.
when i blast the shit out of the little bastards with my shotgun, your gonna grumble something about data integrity and security.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
..but can they stream?
-- kortex "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts"
I've gotta get a Beowolf cluster of these!
Although I applaud their efforts, it seems that the data was transferred using M-Systems DOC modules (flash). A far cry from clay tablets. Whatever happened to standards?!
Schrodinger's cat is either dead or really pissed off...
The Worlds Record for Data Transfer in a Station Wagon"
Basically, a station wagon of 35 gig tapes from SETI is driven to it's destination. Takes 16 hrs to fill 1 tape.
Although it is very humorous to see pigeons used, they are still prone to packet failure (automatic weapons fire).
Darn it! The moment I saw the article I wanted to reply with a "Holy Grail" reference...people beat me to it. :-)
We want a shrubbery!
Would that be considered "great bandwidth"?
to get pedantic for a sec:
While "bandwidth" isn't exactly the same as data rate (bandwidth is the total maximum physical capacity for the medium), continual improper usage of the word has lead to them being defacto synonyms.
And YES. That IS great bandwidth (it's the classic example in Tannenbaum's text book: Never underestimate the bandwidth of a stationwagon full of magtapes. )
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Yep, and I believe it was one of the guys from MS Research that said he could buy new servers with RAID arrays and send them cross country for less than the cost of a network link that could support the same kind of data transfer =)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Just in case you guys are curious how the pigeons carried their data!
M-System, Israeli Company that produces tiny memory cards. They supplied 64 tiny DiskOnChips, each with 64MB (megabytes) of storage space". The availability of high density small size flash memory, enables the transfer of very large quantities of data in physical form. A capsule containing 20-22 chips was attached to each pigeon. In total, the 3 pigeons carried chips with a capacity of 4GB.
Placeholder for Massively Redundant Geek Jokes, Including an Inevitable Monty Python Reference.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Actually, the distance involved matters not. Bandwidth is purely the time to put data on the line. Latency is the time it takes to get from A to B. So the bandwidth would be the same no matter how far they travelled or how fast they flew. A good simile is bandwidth is how many tapes you can load in your trunk per hour. Latency is how fast you can drive those tapes to your destination.
Scott, Keeper of the Crystal Flame
Yeah but the ping times suck right...
/T
Stack a 747 full of writable dvd's and you get hell of a bandwidth...
Or even better...
Put em on a superfreighter class ship...
Warning: This sig contains a small bug. ==> *
I'm sure their friends at Google are pleased.
If you're pinging pigeons you're sick and should go seek help!
(From the article) "The technology doesn't suffer from electricity interruptions." Er ... lightning not withstanding.
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1149.html
Specificaly the Frame Format is wrong. Memory cards with (I'm assuming) a Fat FS was used in the test and the RFC states that paper with datagrams should be used. Sounds like a M$ implementation of a RFC if you ask me....
My Hello World is 512 bytes. But it's also a valid Fat12 boot sector, Fat12 file reader, and Pmode routine.
Was the data encrypted as it was sent?
RIAA President Cary Sherman declares war on Pigeon Enabled Internet file-sharers
There is no non infringing use for this
type of technology
I want to know the Coconut Transfer rate of a Swallow.
And to make this reference complete....
both African and European Swollows!
Pigeons carrying data? Web page has photos of baby birds as a way to replicate the system, photos of turtles for no good reason.
I think the posts for April Fools Day have started to arrive. Damn, it's early this year.
Better get mine in, then: LZip for DOS - Yes, lzip 2.0 has been ported to DOS! Lzip is an advanced file compression utility that generates smaller file sizes than either gzip or bzip2, and does so much faster. Lzip can achieve these goals because it it based on a so-called "lossy" compression scheme.
..Oh wait, it's just tomorrow!
There were three pigeons, so shouldn't we divide the 2.27Mbps by three? Or at least assume three seperate ADSL lines? Really, the bandwidth of a pigeon is 2.27/3=.756Mbps. That's very close to 768Kbps found in a lot of DSL packages. I'd say that your average pigeon has the same bandwidth as DSL. Interestingly enough, as technology increases both the ability to fit more memory in a pigeon ready device and bandwidth should increase. I wonder which will grow faster?
What crack smokers can't transfer faster than 4 Gigs in 96 hours over even a crappy ADSL uplink? Shesh
What we really need are "Wi-Fi Certified" pigeons.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these things!
I'm going to replace my CPU with a mouse and wheel as soon as I get a chance.
When I was a youngster my family had chickens. They taught themselves to fly (chickens, not family). It was a beautiful thing. Chickens flying and roosting in the trees of Somerville Maine. To this day people do not believe that my chickens could fly. I was happy to find this link at the bottom of the article...
when PETA learns about their firewall!
How long would it take to run a "ping" over a pidgeon based connection?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I'm quite impressed that a pigeon can do 100km in 2.5 hours though, I had no idea they were *that* fast...
;)
Well, they were flying downhill at the time.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
is all the 'packets' they drop
Pigeons perform much better if you give them proper attention.
What this goes to show is that a cheap and somewhat reliable technology can sometimes put our high-tech stuff to shame when response time is not a factor.
NetFlix is the most commonly cited example, how they can send a DVD over USPS faster than that information more often than not faster and cheaper than it could have been delivered over the Internet.
Sometimes moving the data physically is better than moving the data by wire, and this should always be taken into account when designing an information system. The Internet's great, but it's not the solution to all data transfer needs.
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of shithawks carrying tiny memory cards"
then streaming with realmedia
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Hey, and if you're hungry, eat your bandwidth!
Jay | http://oldos.org
LOVE the sig. Please don't sue me. :)
Right is wrong when left is right.
even if it's an aprils fool joke, it isn't a very good one.
Because everything is quite plausible. An 0.8" microdrive would be just light enough to allow a pigeon to fly, and the distance and time messurements are quite realistic for a fligh with load.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
You can eat the pigeons (squab, actually) when they arrive.
And yes, just like chiken, but better.
...is trying to turn all of our isp's into Stool Pigeons anyways.
Since of course the air speed velocity of an african swallow... I mean pigeon...
I trrew my DVD collection across the room yesterday. That's 1 terabyte per second, right?
isn't till tomorrow!
perl -e '$_="\007/4`\cp%2,".chr(127);s/./"\"\\c$&\""/gees
...a beowulf cluster full of pigeons.
Nasty!!!
Article Should Have Been Titled... Placeholder for Massively Redundant Geek Jokes, Including an Inevitable Monty Python Reference.
Jazman Pissed, Penis Small.
The ancient sport of "The pigeon war, better known as kash al-hamam, involves having opponents keep their flocks up circling in the sky as they try to lure each other's pigeons into their flocks."
So the pigeon carrier signal can be hijacked, and data can be stolen in a new kind of man-in-the-middle type attack specific to the pigeon protocol.
Additionally, this type of attack is freighted with geopolitical intrigue: this pigeon war sport is practiced in Lebanon, which, being a place of conflict with Israel, renders yet another dimension of threat to the robustness and security of the pigeon carrier signal.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Not a fair comparison against DSL...they multiplexed the pigeons. This is just more anti-DSL FUD
;P
-Turkey
An African or a European pigeon?
But I think there is work on extending the TCP/IP protocols for interplanetary missions, so timeouts etc might be OK?
There is an old saying -- "Don't underestimate the bandwidth of a truck loaded with magnetic tape".
(Today that would be CDs och DVDs, of course.)
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
I'm quite impressed that a pigeon can do 100km in 2.5 hours though, I had no idea they were *that* fast...
Yeah, they definitely are some pretty interesting little buggers, expecially since you would never think that of these deprecated and ubiquitous birds.
Consider their capacity to learn the route, in additional to the purely physical fait of flying the distance.
Sigged!
I wonder about ducks in that regard... 100km/hr but lousy homing instincts.
C|N>K
"The technology eliminated the need for cat 5..."
In fact, I would recommend not using ANY kind of cat technologies with this protocol.
eleven plus two / twelve plus one
Let me stash a crapload of DVDs full of data in my backpack and I'll hop on my motorcycle for the worlds fastest bandwidth test.
Or maybe a pallet of data-filled tape drives on a bullet train from one end of Japan to another?
I guess I'm missing something.
yes, but how secure is my data?
Try getting those pigeon to fly at night or during bad weather. HA!
Namely that a station wagon (which you control) = a pigeon (which you do not control)
The reason the Israeli(s) compared their pigeons to packets should be fairly obvious. Packets tend to get lost, corrupted, etc... so we create overhead (extra packets/birds) in order to compensate for lost information. Its a trade off between reliability & cost/efficiency.
anyways, as i write this, you're slowly being modded down as overrated, so i'm assuming that teh m0ds get my point.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Ah but what is the bandwidth of an unladen African Pigeon?
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
March 31st thru April 2nd is a good time to take newspaper/email/web info with a grain of salt. PEK ---
That at the time of posting, it was already April 1 in israel... should be at GMT any second now... let the games begin.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
My service is 6.0Mb down, 768Kb up (thanks Speakeasy).
4GB =~ 34359738368 bits (1024B/KB * 1024KB/MB * 1024MB/GB * 8b/B) * 4.
34359738368/6000000 =~ 5726 seconds =~ 1.6 hrs
Now, granted that is *download* speed. Upload is about 12.5 hours.
This is a FAR CRY from 96 hours. Even if the u/l speed were a paltry 384, that's still only about 25hrs.
What gives?
I've FedEx'ed RAIDS before for well over 100Mbps/box, but the latency is a bit high...
When a Clear Channel radio station changes formats and therefore needs a large volume of music on site quickly, they usually send a server that is pre-loaded with the new format worth of music on HDs, and the studio just plugs that into their network. This also gives them the capability to change the format overnight without anybody at the studio complex needing advanced notice, so that soon-to-be-unemployed DJs don't see it coming and therefore leave the station a few days early to ruin the transition... the UPS delivery of the new music comes in a non-descript cardboard box which can be scheduled to be on the site just hours before the changeover happens.
This has the stench of an April Fool's Joke alright.
-- Linux: Stays crunchy even in milk! --
I keep hoping, but so far Verizon says my neighborhood doesn't qualify for homing pigeons, and they have no immediate plans to upgrade. Sigh.
nt
Actually, that's a working pace for a pigeon. They were working hard, but not really what you could call "trying." Birds are fast.
Mind you a duck will overhaul a pigeon. That fat body is all wing flapping muscle. A duck is built to fly fast, high and for days at a time if needed. A duck in fear of its life can break 100 kph in level flight. An Eider just trying to get somewhere in a hurry for no particular reason has been clocked at 76 kph. That's the current officially confirmed record.
Nevermind the falcon that eats the pigeon creating packet loss.
I have no idea what the achievable bandwidth of a duck is though. They could deliver data intercontinetally. Having to wait through migratory periods would probably kill it pretty good.
KFG
With 3 homing pigeons and those things in the iPod mini they could have easily done 12GB instead of 4.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I assume these pigeons were carrying microdrives (4GB), so it follows that as the microdrive got bigger the pigeon would be able to transfer much more data per flight. Therefore, a pigeon carrying an 8GB microdrive would have a transfer rate of 4.54Mbps. 16GB = 9.08Mbps, and so on.
The possibilities for pigeon data transfer are limitless!
From the sky.. Beware, as the bandwidth usage increases, there will be more and more packets dropped..
Pidgeons can sure do great things, just like Google's Pidgeon Rank Technology(TM).
What will they think of next?
Too many zeros, not enough ones
For large datafiles. You load them onto harddrives and overnight them to the destination. For large amounts of data it is -by far- the fastest.
That just proves that sometimes using the sneaker-net is faster than getting the wire going.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
We didn't receive any messages, and Captain BlackAdder did not shoot this delicious, plump-breasted pigeon.
Imagine being slashdotted by pigeons!
Some people would say this has already happened
Think about it.
160GB Hard drive is how big?
Karma: Non-Heinous
You can, but that would lead to DOS by TCP resource starvation.
'SBEMAIL!' is better than a goat!!
netgames would really suck with that kind of latency.
but can they run (or fly) on linux?
I think the problem here is similar to that described in the RFC for IPACQOS when recommending against round-robins. The robins don't support a necessary homing feature. I think ducks may have some sort of homing mechanishm, but it's not precise, and tends to increase round trip transit times.
funny munging
Many critical computing tasks have strict requirements on latency not just bandwidth - this solution won't cut it. Now let me get back to Deathmatch...
Have Randy Johnson hurl an iPod:
40GB @ 98mph gives you a meaty 95GB/s throughput with an awesome ping to boot.
Yet another example of how Randy Johnson spanks the birds
Comment removed based on user account deletion
*ahem* it's March 31 for a lot of people (most, actually) who aren't yankees...
I undertook a similar experiment with my girfriend. She was to deliver 650Mb of data less than 25Km.
Lets just say that whilst the data did arrive at its destination, the various vanity products didn't do much for any in-built error correction.
It also took about 3 days.
One of the problems with a global 'community based' wireless network is how to connect continents.
Imagine building a small data reception/storage/transmission unit which could be attached to the leg of a bird. As the bird flies overhead, data is beamed from the ground to the transponder box on the bird's leg, where the data is stored. Somewhere else on Earth, there is a second ground station which queries the transponders attached to any birds which fly nearby. If the earth station finds a packet with its address (possibly multicast), it downloads it and processes it.
One bird is pretty useless for data transmission. Imagine whole flocks of migratory birds though. The bandwidth might become substantial and the flight patterns predictable. Non-migratory birds could serve a use in metropolitan area networks. Even if flight paths are not predictable, perhaps random flight paths will suffice to get some data through?
Another use could be to circumvent international firewalls and censorship. Imagine flocks of birds flying into China, each carrying a few megabytes of banned news, politics and books on their leg. A new form of 'eternity' service (well, at least the life time of a bird) could also be born. Imagine if a bird could carry a ROM (with transmitter) and fly around distributing something which has otherwise been removed from the Internet.
Yes, this is a little 'off the planet' but I don't think there are any technical obstacles to it actually working. Despite the date I'm serious.
But here, the date switched two hours ago ...
Unfortunately, the latency will kill you.
I was wondering if homing pigeons were extint.
This FAQ answered that question and many others for me.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
this actually works. here in nz, a caving tour company uses pigeons to ferry memory sticks back to base so the digital photos can be waiting when the tourists get back. http://www.waitomo.co.nz/pigeonpix.html
Duck homing is pretty precise. I have ducks and geese in my "backyard" (the Mohawk River) who manage to find the exact same favorite pool every year from whatever far flung warmer clime they spend it in (the bastards).
The problem as I see it is that pigeons are dogs and ducks are cats. Tell a pigeon to carry something through antipigeon fire to save the regiment and the otherwise intelligent animal will say, "Oooooooo, Oooooooo, can I? Pleeeeeeeeeese!"
Whereas you to try to tell a duck that and he'll say, "Yeah, right Sparky. Blow me. Why don't you just run along and carry it yourself? Or maybe ask that stupid pigeon. I'll bet he'll do it. A pigeon will do anything. Just ask that Skinner dude."
Which is why no duck has ever won a Crouix de Guerre. On the other hand no duck is standing on his remaining leg stuffed in a museum either.
The ducks like it that way.
That isn't to say that a duck won't oblige by carrying a message, but it'll go when he wants, where he wants.
If that happens to coincide with your needs, fine and dandy, if not, well, tough noogies.
KFG
Sometimes they come with notes attached.. it's like fortune cookies with wings!
A denial of service attack would be like something out of Hitchcock's The Birds.
Yes, but it seems inconsistent, since the universe is apparently centered there.
Indigestable Chicken McNugget Protocol?
Canadian geese fly at decent speeds as well, but what sets them apart is their stamina. They migrate from from canada to the equitorial regions without taking a break. They practically invented the V as well, and their necks are built for stability and control. You would want canadian geese for long distance communications, and probably something like ducks or sparrows even (they are fast little buggers). Oh and btw, never underestimate the bandwidth of a fedex truck filled with 1TB tapes.
If you are about to mod me down, keep in mind that this post was most likely sarcastic.
I'm quite impressed that a pigeon can do 100km in 2.5 hours though, I had no idea they were *that* fast...
I think you are easily impressed. By bird standards, that's not that fast, only 24mph. It does explain, however, why the most common birds I see my greyhounds (44mph) chowing down on are pigeons... Of course, it also helps that pigeons are so stupid that they try to outrun the dogs, rather than gain altitude.
Still doesn't have anything on UPS or FedEx.
1Gbps ethernet would take 22 hours to transfer 10 Terabytes at maximum network utilization without incorporating any over head costs for packetizing the data and error checking.
In the same amount of time you could transfer a truckload of 200 GB hard drives.
-- Adam
To issue some hunting permits, and hunt for the flocks of Peer-2-Pigeons ;)
This just got me to thinking about some of the other interesting thought experiments out there like the infinite monkeys protocol, or IP over bongo drums...
The useful thing about pigeons is that they're really reliable for getting data between two places, albeit slow. (On the subject of firewalling, a recent study I read determined that pigeons follow roads as a convenient navigation tool... blow up a road, and see packet loss???)
Some other methods (read: transport media) come to mind, but the difficulty is in finding one that can cover as great distances as pigeons reliably or within a reasonably timely fashion. Or more importantly, ensuring that the data is transmitted between two points of your choosing (arrival at other locations would represent 'lost' packets).
As I mentioned, bongo drums have already been proposed, and I believe smoke signals, light flashes with mirrors.
Some other ideas that come to mind might not work as well.
1) A one-way protocol could involve damming a river & transmitting information by releasing water, or more simply using colored dye to send a signal downstream... Perhaps it could be augmented for upstream bandwidth using Salmon (during spawning season) Pros: very reliable downstream Cons: not as reliable upstream, low bandwidth. Improvements: data could be floated in some sort of vessel to improve bandwidth.
2) Release of a large number of weather balloons could transport data, but would literally rely on the wind for delivery at the proper location.
Pros: redundancy increases with increase in weather balloons, bandwidth could be relatively high. Cons: no guarantee of reception of packets (but isn't that whay IP is all about?) High latency.
3) This one is my favorite: using seismometers and some device capable of creating a detectable disturbance, data could be transmitted through the entire planet reliably, with relatively low latency, at a low bandwidth. Pros: reliability, low latency. Cons: building demolitions are detectable, but what would be the smallest detectable vibration that wouldn't be lost in background noise? Use of explosives could work, but unfortunately, those are tough to replace, dangerous, etc.
After that, my ideas get admittedly... weird.
4) The butterfly protocol: butterfly flaps its wings in Tokyo, it rains in New York. Not very reliable. Too subject to interference.
5) Similar to the seismograph idea, using a gravitometer and a large enough mobile mass, such as a train engine, data could be represented by the location of that mass. Orient it one way, you have a zero, rotate it the other way, the center of gravity shifts, and you have a one. What range could this work at? How much mass would you need? How much energy required to move it? Pros: could work without fear of interference by RF, solar flares, etc at very large distances. Propagation of signal at light speed. Cons: energy required to move the mass, low bandwidth.
6) Encode the data into the DNA of a microscopic organism, release into the wild, wait for it to propagate and eventually be picked up at the destination. Pros: DNA allows for extremely reliable transmission of data. The packet will likely get there uncorrupted. You can fit a lot of data into a strand of DNA. Cons: possible environmental hazards, packet loss due to environmental factors that kill the organism, high latency. (Perhaps this is already being done... why else do we have a new strain of flu coming from China each & every year?)
These people looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
What's the average speed in megabits of a laden sparrow.
African or Europen
What? I Dont know
AHHHHHHHHHHHH
the latency sucks.
/* Insert some overused slashdot quote here */
Not only can they get your data from point-A to point-B in record speeds... they're also vastly superior in helping us find exactly what we're looking for! :)
This reminds me of an operating system class I took. The prof presented a module on estimation, with wacky examples like figuring out the average rainfall in the Mississipi watershed. The final test problem on this subject was to estimate the amount of data that could be stored in a professor's office full of DAT tapes.
Remembering the data storage capacity of a DAT tape was simple. However after estimating the size of a tape (including the sleeve?), the size of an office, guessing whether there was furniture, etc, I would be surprised if anyone was within two orders of magnitude of the "correct" answer.
At 20,000 feet, no less. I can hear some honking right now. They've been arriving in my "backyard" for a few days now. Spring is in the air, as it were. Magnificent creatures. I like to watch them flying territorial loops, practicing touch and go landings on the river with each loop.
Last year while riding a bike path that parallels a section of the old Erie Canal I had a run in with a Canada Goose that was taking advantage of the path for a bit of sunning. He wasn't moving until he was ready, and I wasn't going by until he moved. You don't argue with a goose.
So I joined him. It was very pleasant. Eventually he hopped into the canal and I rode on my way.
I believe a flock of Whooper Swans still holds the visually confirmed altitude record though (according the Guiness boys and all web sources I find). 29,000 feet. Just cruising over Ireland, outbound from Iceland to their wintering grounds in Scotland, or maybe Japan.
We've been getting a few Trumpeter Swans around here lately, which is welcome sight, given that they were hunted to extinction in these parts.
If I ever bump into a swan on the bike path I'm not only not going to argue with it, I'll probably think it's a good sign that it's time to turn around and head the other way. Fast.
KFG
As one of the original implementers of rfc1149 in Bergen, I have only one thing to say:
Congratulations for a successful test!
the pidgeons could become roving hotspots...you could visually know if you were in a spots by checking out the amount of poop on the ground
This is a pretty rediculous thing to bother to do :P
Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data that the medium allows. But, what most people here are theorizing about is the throughput, not the bandwidth. The throughput is determined by the protocol being used.
How many birds are available, how many can be in the air at any given time, how are acknowledgements handled - and retransmits for lost units of data?
The throughput will rely heavily on the distance/latency.
We are obviously on the verge of a revolution in communications and networking! Clearly, if it turns out that Internet can be cheaply had via pigeon, the price of broadband will drop, and millions of homes all across America will soon be wired (or "flown" or "pigeon-linked" or whatever it'll eventually be called) into our glorious information superhighway! Millions will be able to enjoy the Internet and will be able to use it productively, to improve the quality of their lives, and download tons of free porn! The world shall become a more enlightened, happier civilization! And it'll all be thanks to the pigeons! God bless them!
3 homing pigeons carried 4 GB (gigabytes) for 100 km distance, achieving, what apparently looks as pigeons' world record in data transfer to a given distance. Bandwidth achieved by the pigeons was 2.27 Mbps...
...or such...
Wow... how fucking useless.
Not to be a flame, but seriously... what good does that do? Besides the new slew of jokes that can circulate around: "My connection is slower than homing pigeons!!"
Don't forget one of the many other ways pigeons contribute to information transfer... Google's PigeonRank.
Did anyone else notice the hidden linux humor in the referenced Google page from the artical?
From the paragraph How was PigeonRank developed?:
Page and Brin experimented with numerous avian motivators before settling on a combination of linseed and flax (lin/ax) that not only offered superior performance, but could be gathered at no cost from nearby open space preserves. This open space lin/ax powers Google's operations to this day, and a visit to the data coop reveals pigeons happily pecking away at lin/ax kernels and seeds.
I just hope that SCO doesn't try to charge Google with foul play...
-Wes
As I begin reading this, Marcy Playground's "Pigeon Farm" starts blaring through my speakers. Chance? or Fate? Prolly neither, but trippy as hell!
That and the ton of pigeon droppings that will need to be cleaned up everyday. Imagine, thousands upon thousands of pigeon flying over the city, with dropping raining like rain... ugh...
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
Very easy:
1) Wring Neck
2) De-feather
3) Lather BBQ sauce
4) Slow cook over fire, ~ 1 hr
It's the Encrypting thats hard.... I prefer to feed them beer, but that makes packet routing difficult.
"That fat body is all wing flapping muscle"
I read this and instantly got a mental picture of some poor geek in a bar modifying it for use as a pick-up line.
[matt]
"I paid my money, I refuse to be inconvenienced." -Karl Cocknozzle
When they find out that this technology can be used to transfer copyrighted material, and therefore showing up as a potential infringement, those pigeons are going to be in a whole lot of trouble.
After all, why on earth will somebody want to transfer 4 GB of data in such a unlawful and secret way? :)
you dirty pirates!
There used to be a sysadmin who worked where I now work who used to big on everything2.com. One of his greatest nodes was this one. It discussed in absurdly great length the theoretical "bandwidth" of "a station wagon full of quarter-inch tapes".
;)
It made me laugh picturing this guy writing this. Because this is the guy who would suspend production servers from ropes dangling from ceiling AC ducts.
Woop! I can load a semi-trailer full of hard drives and achieve the ultimate beyond these pigeons... hell let's load a cargo vessal full of latest greatest storage and take it to Australia!!!!
I recommend Raptor
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1149.txt
R.Does anyone here imagine the RIAA investing in some scope-equipped rifles. Perhaps they track down the dead pigeon and look up the destination. Then they sue the poor sap for PIRACY.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
I'd hate to think of hungry red-necks causing packet loss.
Well, there's always the line from the Howlin' Wolf song (300 Pounds of Joy) to fall back on:
"I was built for comfort, I wasn't built for speed."
KFG
Economy of scale--er... feathers.
On the plus side, if you shut them all up in a room for long enough, you get your own free Beowulf cluster!
[...but is that really what they meant by data replication?]
'If you're flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit.'
The problem is, a single packet drop could actually kill someone.
That's assuming that your bandwidth is initially limited by your finite number of pigeons. Perhaps it's not--you have plenty of pigeons--you just can only tape thumbdrives to pigeons at a very slow rate, say. Thus as the distance increases, your surplus pigeons decrease (although you still have a surplus), but you're still limited only by your thumbdrive taping speed, so doubling the distance wouldn't affect the bandwidth at all.
Dlugar
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
Just let me duct tape a lacie big disk to my trusty homing pigeon Freddy, and well see about this 2.27 Mbps stuff.
And I even wrote the article :-)
_ id =12239
http://linux.omnipotent.net/article.php?article
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
And for us yankees that's ~62MPH (100KPH) and 47MPH (76KPH).
It's very flat, treeless, and windy where I live in Texas and I have personally clocked pigeons flying parrallel to the interstate (with the wind) at 70MPH (~105KPH).
Silly birds have no where to roost but the overpasses and there's always a pile of freshly killed feathers on the road.
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
It's a stupid joke, that's what gives.
. . .always a pile of freshly killed feathers on the road.
Which makes a nice counterpoint to the armadillos. That curl up in a ball defence don't work so hot when your adversary is a Peterbuilt.
Do you guys arrange to hit them every quarter mile so you can use them as milage markers, or is that just something the 'dillos do on their own?
KFG
So when I want to view download something.. do I have to ping it with my pidgeon first to make sure the server is alive?
There exists some positive integer N that you are the Nth person to read this signature.
but do these "pigeons" run Lin...sorry wrong thread. :)
And what about putting a terrabyte of data on that jet that went 5,000 mph .. whats the bandwidth on that?
And you thought a packet storm was bad. This could be bad for people that like to drive convertables with the "top" down. :)
... you can tell when your server's been slashdotted by the 42 pounds of pigeon poop on it.
And the next time those asshats at optn-rewardoffer.com spam me, instead of just pinging their server a few thousand times, I can send them back some pigeons with frickin' laser beams on their head.
But what about the latency? I'd sure hate to run an SSH session by pigeon..
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
UHG! I am turning off my computer for tomorrow... SLASHDOT BE DAMNED! hahahahahahahahahaha
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of magnetic tape." -- Andrew Tanenbaum
Finally air mail is faster than snail mail.
I'd say it was 5Cats.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Exactly - totally unfair. Also consider the packet sized involved - hold one while I set my packet size to 1.3GB and just see what kind of transfer rate I ge****NO CARRIER*****
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Well, when the pigon does what pigons do, is that considered an ICMP-Packet-Administratively-Denied?
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
n/t but grinning!
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Could you imagne a p2p based off this first it would shit all over your car and the RIAA would be out with a gun shooting them but it sure would be funny
just because your a schizophrenic doesn't mean people arn't really out to get you
latancy. it's not mbits, it's in g/hr
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
RFC 1149 - Standard for the transmission of IP datagrams on avian carriers.
David Waitzman 1 April 1990.
RFC 1149 from google's cache
-A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed-
I'm Rick James, bitch!
Never underestimate the bandwith of a minivan. The latency sucks, but the bandwith rules. (How many DVD's can you fit in a Dodge Grand Caravan?...)
you shouldn't use ducks as carriers during hunting season.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
Wohooooo, now that we have two independent implementations, perhaps we can get RFC 1149 on the standards track?!?!
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
They compare it to the implementation of RFC1149 in Bergen by BLUG,however this is clearly a breach of 1149.
From RFC1149:
[snip]
Frame Format
The IP datagram is printed, on a small scroll of paper, in hexadecimal, with each octet separated by whitestuff and blackstuff. The scroll of paper is wrapped around one leg of the avian carrier. A band of duct tape is used to secure the datagram's edges. The bandwidth is limited to the leg length.
[/snip]
See. One IP datagram, one scroll of paper. The community demands interoperability tests if CPIP is ever to become a standard
*sigh*
computers let you make more mistakes faster, with the possible exception of handguns and tequila.
Ghey.
Karma whoring
Perv.
;-)
Sorry, it's April Folls, I couldn't resist.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
but this one is for real 100%
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
We never stop running. But while running, we're looking for weapons
Ducks are fast and they even don't obey the local speedlimit
Well, anyway they say the pigeons flew 100km, but not how fast. I can toss a DVD a meter, and woops, 4,7 GB/s bandwidth.
Is there an ISO measure for bits/meter?
cool! now I can socially engineer my way onto the network with just a loaf of bread! ;-)
-AC
"freshly killed feathers"
ummm how DO you kill a feather then?
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
Dick Dastardly, Mutley, Klunk and Zilly will stop that pigeon!
Does that make them DOS-ers?
Rrrrrriiipppppppp-banggggg-pow!!!!!!
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
I just ear that SCO will suit every companies using the virtual pigeon network. They argue that they have patents on the Pigeon DNA so every people using or feeding pigeon have to buy them a license.
a really tiny drumstick thu. Its a pain in the ass to eat. Good thu
It is well known that Google has used pigeon power for years. http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html
I think the Pigeon Protocol is incompatible with CAT 5, although it is probably incompatible with any cat at all.
sig(h)
Except my brother. And his wife. Oh, and our father. Come to think of it, most people like a good joke more than me, but that's neither here nor there.
I want to complain about the technical inaccuracy of this post. Actually, it's not inaccurate, but incomplete. The thing about network traffic is, when it's point-to-point, AFAIK, they all require handshaking/2-way communication. TCP over carrier pigeon would require multiple trips to achieve this, thus obliterating the one-way speed gains.
Of course I noticed that they didn't say it was TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), but TCP (Transmission by Carrier Pigeons), so 2-way may not be a necessity. Also, using pigeons would probably be better for verifying data integrity. Unfortunately, if the data is damaged, the whole procedure must be repeated, effectively tripling the total data transfer time -- assuming the sent pigeons must return before resending data.
They are shipping them by carrier pigeon!?
If there was wind blowing at a constant direction, it would've taken more than twice the time
T (round trip) = 2X/V
2X/V != X/(V-WIND) + X/(V+WIND)
What is the latency, for playing Tribes 2?