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Pigeon Protocol Finds a Practical Purpose
Selanit writes "Since David Waitzman wrote his tongue-in-cheek Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers, there have been occasional attempts to actually transmit information via pigeon. One group back in 2001 successfully sent a PING command. But now there's a practical use for pigeon-based communications: photographers working for the white-water rafting company Rocky Mountain Adventures send memory sticks full of digital photos via homing pigeon so the photos will be ready when the rafters finish up. The company has details on how the pigeons are trained and equipped. It may not be a full implementation of the Pigeon Protocol, but it works in narrow canyons far off the beaten path — and just as David Waitzman presciently predicted, they occasionally suffer packet loss due to hawks and ospreys."
I think the best part of the story is the packet loss explanation!! If only the pigeons could upgrade their internal CDMA protocol!
I rafted the Poudre this summer. It was a great time. The company we went with did a great job, not sure why the need to race photos back. Our photographer rode back with us, while we turned in our gear, changed clothes, etc. he set up in the office, and started showing the pictures to folks on an iMac. While we watched he burned a dvd. We had a big group so he set a price and sold us a dvd that we could all copy. It was pretty sweet. Mountain Whitewater Descents was the company we used and I'd recommend them to anyone headed that way.
Apparently a while back some French trappers got snowed in and hid their gun powder by the river - that's how it got its name.
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?
This is less "TCP/IP over Pidgeon" and more "Sneakernet Over Pidgeon." Although if all the memory cards were the same size you could get away with calling it ATM over Pidgeon, I guess.
"Since David Waitzman wrote his tongue-in-cheek Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers, there have been occasional attempts to actually transmit information via pigeon.
Yeah, attempts like the victory at Marathon in 490BC...
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
We use to always compare TCP/IP packets to pidgeons.. ..
The joke was send more pidgeons and stop routing them over the pond where the duck hunters are.
Brings to mind the old expression, never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck load of DLT tapes going 55mph. ..... Tapes on Planes
Or the recover plan of "TOPS"
YMMV
yikes, I'd hate to see the ms on that ping reply.
Defective Logic
a.k.a. "POOP".
Ospreys are deeply beautiful birds of prey and watching them is magic, but I've never seen an osprey take anything but fish.
ideopath @ play
One of the story tags is "wortthless".
Kind of hard to hack a Pigeon. Technology could help increase data transfer speeds. Miniature Jato rocket packs would be a first step. A few technical problems would need to be overcome like keeping the feathers on the pigeons but with enough R&D money I'm sure the problems could be overcome.
...and a two-year-old article in the Denver Post is "news" to SlashDot.
So now we can send a message to Black Jack Pershing saying "For God's sake, stop shelling your own positions!" Unfortunately, 200 Doughboys perished while Windows needed rebooting.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
I don't know why everyone needs to find something to whine about in this article; it's a pretty cool story. An amusing blend of modern and ancient technology to solve an interesting problem.
This may be useful in a post apocalyptic world. Chances are, Internet style connectivity will be wiped out. Decentralized regional networks may still exist. Transporting high-density data using antique methods such as the pigeons can allow for FidoNet (remember that?) other BBS-style data exchange. Anything that can get the information moving again is a good thing.
[http://it-tastes-so-good.blogspot.com] Are you hungry?
But I will anyway
vegard@gyversalen:~$ ping -i 900 10.0.3.1
PING 10.0.3.1 (10.0.3.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=6165731.1 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=255 time=3211900.8 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=5124922.8 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=6388671.9 ms
from http://www.blug.linux.no/rfc1149/pinglogg.txt
Of course, I didn't RTFA, but I'm presuming this is principally for multi-day trips, releasing a pigeon every evening. If so, why the hell not HF? Skybounce (AKA NVIS) can easily get out of narrow canyons, and any ham could stake out an antenna in 5 minutes, and get a link up in 5 more. Let it upload all night.. This being a business, they'd need an appropriate (non-amateur) license, but I'm just saying it's dead simple.
I'm pretty sure there was a story like that about four years ago on slashdot as well. I think it was from Australia where the pigeons were carrying pictures home from some three day adventure trips.
In both cases they mention that some of the pigeons get lost, and here also that sometimes they are just too slow. Why not go for redundancy? Wouldn't it make sense to send two pigeons each carrying a copy. I think it would dramatically decrease the failure rate.
Of course to do such redundancy you would have to carry some device that could copy the pictures. Does there exist cameras, which can do it? I can imagine there are plenty of situations, where people would happily pay the extra cost for the data security, it would not only be for pigeons.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
Well prior even to publication of RFC 1149, similar protocols were employed in the CAD business, as documented by a source I'd hope more Slashdot readers would be familiar with.
My phone bill, my opinions.
One time I attended a class for people wanting to start a business. The teacher started the class asking us each to describe the business we had in mind of starting. One woman stood up and said she wanted to start a "peregrine falcon business."
Without any further description, the teacher said, "You can't sell those birds. They're protected." She replied that she wasn't going to sell falcons. She was going to rent them.
Her plan was to get contracted by big box stores. When they get normal birds stuck flying around inside the building, they'll call the falcon lady and she'll bring her peregrines in and set them loose. It's illegal to poison birds. Shooting them indoors is also a dicey proposition considering that the species could be protected as a migratory bird. But there's no law against releasing a falcon to devour a wild bird.
Don't know if her business 'took off,' but I admired her clever idea.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Only 4 Pictures of each raft? Satellite internet access has to be cheaper than custom pigeon backpacks...
If the USB memory sticks were large enough (capacity-wise) this could actually have quite and impressive bandwidth and could easily rival a dedicated fixed-line broadband connection. It's the latency that kills you on this one though!
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
I guess if they forget to send the pigeons for a few trips and go OMG we have too many photos and send them all at once, that would be a pigeon denial of service attack.
I remember seeing a documentary about this on TV years ago, only back then they were carrying rolls of 35mm film. The only thing new is that they've upgraded to digital photographs and memory sticks.
Back then it was more impressive because they were able to send the rolls of film back to the visitor center and process them on a 1 hour photo lab machine (which doesn't take anywhere near an hour to process) and have the prints up on display by the time the rafters came in from their trip.
Windows is a bonfire, Linux is the sun. Linux only looks smaller if you lack perspective.
This is nothing new. Pigeon (not Pidgin) carriers have existence since...forever. They're still used in some limited cases today. I don't see anything terribly different done by these folks; heck, the pigeons don't even come back, so it's not full TCP...
Hence why this was meant to be funny...
Posted: 06/24/2007 02:06:52 AM MDT
This is old news, I've even seen references to this before that. Also it has nothing to do with RFC 2549 other than birds carrying bits.
Are you seriously saying that using Pidgin (www.pidgin.im) doesn't work properly because various larger birds are killing the ones carrying my message?!?! I am outraged at the thought that reputable (read: cut-throat bastards) like Micro$oft, Yahoo, and gAyOL would stoop to these levels. Training large birds to kill pigeons is a despicable practice and should be investigated. If you are lying to me, you should be executed immediately.. For shame... sir.. for shame..
Good luck, agent Calavera. Viva la RevoluciÃn!
Gosh is it 2003 already.
Waitomo Adventures in New Zealand used pigeons for transporting camera cards approximately 1.571 eons ago.
This isn't news.
(I wonder if they still use them? A quick peek didn't show it on their site - only some annoying pop-up flash)
NB: I'm quite prepared to be proven wrong about the 'first' part - I researched this almost as long as it took to type this in.
You always send the duplicate and keep the original just in case, seeing as a memory stick for 2gb..is 5$, i would say you can send 1 keep one, even give another as part of the package!
Can't wait to send someone IMs in Pidgin using the Pigeon protocol.
I am not devoid of humor.