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..."

Comments

latency v. bandwidth

[Scott Hussey]

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.

Re:latency v. bandwidth

[irokitt]

This is a debate that nobody will ever win. I was taught that bandwidth was the difference between lower/upper frequencies on a wire, i.e.
"The numerical difference between the upper and lower frequencies of a band of electromagnetic radiation, especially an assigned range of radio frequencies." (thank you Google).
And under that definition, these pigeons have no bandwidth (unless you're counting the frequency at which they flap their wings ;).

The Jargon File says
"Used by hackers (in a generalization of its technical meaning) as the volume of information per unit time that a computer, person, or transmission medium can handle. "Those are amazing graphics, but I missed some of the detail -- not enough bandwidth, I guess." Compare low-bandwidth. This generalized usage began to go mainstream after the Internet population explosion of 1993-1994. 2. Attention span. 3. On Usenet, a measure of network capacity that is often wasted by people complaining about how items posted by others are a waste of bandwidth."

Re:latency v. bandwidth

[Mnemia]

What you just defined bandwidth by is exactly the same definition I used. Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be transmitted per unit time. The parent poster was only wrong about his statement that bandwidth would be halved if distance (and thus latency) were doubled. *That* is incorrect, because the rate you can transmit data at is not affected by the distance to the receiving station. He would be correct if he said that link utilization would be halved for the same amount of data. But bandwidth is constant.

I was just saying that what is doubled in this case is the pipe capacity and latency; the bandwidth part stays the same.

Re:One of those things that shouldn't surprise but

[LostCluster]

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.

Re:Ha!

[daveashcroft]

NOT by GMT...its now 00.51am on 1st April 2004! The world doesnt run on yankee time! ;-)

but seriously

[soricine]

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

Re:Back of envalope

[Erik K. Veland]

It's done :

~11m/s