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Pigeon Protocol Finds a Practical Purpose

Posted by timothy on from the fly-away-little-one dept.

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."

12 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Cache La Poudre by stoolpigeon · · Score: 5, Informative

    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?
  2. Not really TCPIPoP by gblues · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    1. Re:Not really TCPIPoP by antifoidulus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Unless the pigeon comes back it's certainly not TCP, more like Pigeon UDP.

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      Monstar L
    2. Re:Not really TCPIPoP by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 4, Funny

      You simply need to breed packets with higher TTL.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
  3. Another misleading headline...*sigh* by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 5, Informative
    This isn't an implementation of RFC1149. *sigh* It even says so in the summary, not even the freaking article. They're just using carrier pigeons as couriers, like they've been used for centuries.

    "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!
    1. Re:Another misleading headline...*sigh* by Jim+Efaw · · Score: 3, Informative

      More like UUCP mail over pigeon, if we're comparing it to a protocol. On the other hand, we could just call it files by carrier pigeon... uh... why are we having this conversation again? It didn't say the pigeon protocol you're all thinking of (RFC 1149) was used — just that a pigeon protocol was used. I'll just be quiet now.

  4. Photos Obtained Over Pidgens by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    a.k.a. "POOP".

    1. Re:Photos Obtained Over Pidgens by jo42 · · Score: 3, Funny

      As is PHP Object Oriented Programming.

      Yeah, I know, Offtopic... :-p

  5. packet loss due to hawks and ospreys by mindbrane · · Score: 4, Informative

    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
    1. Re:packet loss due to hawks and ospreys by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Ospreys have been known to devour Marines.

  6. Everything old is new again... by rwyoder · · Score: 4, Informative

    ...and a two-year-old article in the Denver Post is "news" to SlashDot.

  7. I would hate to show you by dominux · · Score: 3, Informative

    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