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SA's Largest Telecomms Provider vs. a Pigeon
dagwud writes "Just a few days after this Slashdot article, South Africa's largest telecoms provider, Telkom (which has been taking flak for years for its shoddy and overpriced service), is being pitted against a homing pigeon to see which can deliver 4GB of call centre data logs quickest over a distance of around 80km (50 miles). According to the official website, the race is set to take place September 10."
...African or European?
I wonder if they will be using an RFC compliant pigeon... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers
"My immediate reaction is "WTF? What kind of moron doesn't make things 64-bit safe to begin with?" Linus
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of pigoens hurtling down the highway.
the order for a large shipment of Ospreys, peregrines, and other raptors to South Africa.......
South Africa's largest telecoms provider, Telkom (which has been taking flak for years for its shoddy and overpriced service)
It should be mentioned that they have a monopoly on landlines and that's why they're still the largest despite all the flak. 39% state owned, and ICASA(south africa's communications regulator) is practically telkoms bitch.
This is really old news who cares?
Any kind of memory can get lost ever hear of RAID?
When the telecom mysteriously transmits allegations from dead employees! Or fire raining down from the sky, that's a popular bet.
Will Telkom play fair? Or will they throw resources at the problem to ensure they win? I really don't know a thing about network transport, so what I suggest may not even be possible in the time alloted. The marketing aspects are interesting too. Does Telkom generate good will by taking its lumps good-naturedly and then make real efforts to fix its problems? I suspect that rigging the game could actually do more harm than good.
man, I feel like mold.
will they be counting the time it takes to get the data from the computer, put it on the 4gb media, strap it to the bird, send it off, retrieve it, and load it onto the end computer or will they just do a door-to-door race?
RTFA? ME? Do you know what site you're reading?
Knowing Telkom, this is not a fair competition at all. The Pigeon have an unfair advantage of being faster, and not having the 3GB bandwidth cap that is (were 2 years ago) the norm on Telkom's ADSL accounts.
And I know I mentioned the information was 2 years old, but when talking about SA Telcom, that makes the it practically fully up to date
pigeowned.
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
The show-down is set for tomorrow (Wed 9 Sep) so we even don't have to wait long for the final results!
This sort of thing reminds me of an exam question ohe of my CS professors once asked on an exam.
"Which is more efficient? (or has more bandwidth)
1. An 18-wheeler truck hauling a full load of hard drives (filled to capacity) traveling from New York to San Francisco at an average speed of 50 mph.
or
2. A T1 line transmitting the same data data.
(The necessary data was given as part of the exam question.)
If the trial is any indicator, then the speed of the pidgeon was 4096MB / 68 minutes * 60 seconds/minute = 1.003921569 MB/s. Even if they fail, I wouldn't consider Telkom a terrible ISP, given this test alone.
To be precise, its one of the plot elements from "Going Postal" (2004).
In that case, it was between the Clacks (a mechanical semaphore system) and a mail coach over a distance of several thousand miles....
Have a read, its fun.
Going Postal (Oblig Wikipedia ref)
They should do it here in the US - dove season just opened in many states. Sure, you'll have a lot of packet loss, but the ones that make it thru will be going really really FAST
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
As has been said before, never underestimate the bandwidth of a stationwagon...
I hope they're properly using IP over Avian Carriers, as described in RFC 1149! Otherwise, it's definitely not fair.
Proud member of the Ferengi Socialist Party.
The carrier pigeon is not a practical replacement for a high speed link. For one the latency is quite high compared to DSL. Also it may be less secure since it is using a wireless solution.
In the 70's and 80's, HP in Cupertino used to send engineering drawings (as microfich) to a facility near Santa Cruz, on the other side of the Santa Cruz mountains using carrier pigeons. It was faster and more reliable than using motorcycle courier, and in those days the Darpa-Net wasn't fast enough for the purpose. CPIP - Carrier Pigeon Internet Protocol - good bandwidth, not so good latency, though a packet ACK is easily accomplished with a phone call... :-)
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
I've been a customer for years, and I haven't noticed any problems. (Oh, and first post BTW.)
No doubt Telkom will dig up some arcane legislation whereby it is illegal to pit a pigeon against this heavily state-funded telecoms provider. Further, the people organising this will be served legal papers from ICASA ordering them to cease their operations immediately. After many years of lawsuits (and counter-lawsuits) it will be deemed that the organisers do actually have a right to strap USB sticks to pigeons but by that time Telekom will have bred flocks of the creatures thereby preventing any meaningful and productive competition.
Hope the pigeon wins, but this really does gives a new meaning to the expression 'dropped packet'...
In my 4th year "Computer Networks" course that was a final exam question except it was the school's T1 line (hey that was fast back then) vs an airplane full of CD-R's.
The airplane won easily on total bandwidth, but the Doom2 ping times sucked.
Don't underestimate the throughput of a wagon full of data tapes speeding down a freeway.
My bet is on the telecom employee in the bush with the BB gun.
I wonder what's the MTU of pigeons these days. With modern micro-SD cards, it's got to be north of 8 GB. I'm pretty sure that's bigger than IPv4 can accommodate.
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
Just goes to show that the highest bandwidth device on the planet is a large container ship filled with hard drives. Of course if you need a lower latency device you can always use a cargo 747. If you do the math it blows fiber out of the water. If course of you have a container wash off deck the retransmit time for packet loss in rather high. The TTL for washed over cargo can be sometimes be in the years, such as for these rubber ducks http://rubaduck.com/news/rubber_duck_news-200302-duckies_around_the_world.htm.
The telco should have to deliver lunch as well. mmmm pidgeon.
What is with all the weird paranoia in the posts today?
Ex1
Ex2
Ex3
Ex4
Or did I miss something?
I was living in SA until last year. I skipped the landlines and went with Vodacom for my internet. IT WAS CHEAPER AND FASTER.
This is not a joke. If they are testing a typical DSL landline (which costs a person about $100/month), the pigeon will win.
BTW...Telkom charges you for the phone line, then an internet connection fee, and then you must purchase a "data bundle" which is all you are allowed to use before your internet is cut-off for the month. Most people stay around 1G or 2G of data. The 4G is pricey.
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway. -Andrew S. Tanenbaum
Would IP over avian carriers be called "flappernet"?
Yet Another Tech Blog
(but so much more, including game and movie reviews)
http://yanteb.peasantoid.org
telkom would loose this one trust me, they are horrific
I just realized - IP over Avian Carriers could be considered a conceptual precursor of Delay-Tolerant Networking and the Interplanetary Internet (not to be confused with the Interplanetary Transport Network, which is a method for moving actual things around in the Solar System at minimum cost).
Using pigeons as the transport mechanism would be a pretty good real-world test of the method. Sure, the transport methodology and the tests themselves ould be simulated in the computer, but where's the fun in that? I could see a couple of universities cooperating on a project to maintain a path using the necessary DTN protocols over perhaps a 100-500 mile distance. There's nothing like a real-world exercise to discover the hidden unanticipated issues.
Of course, the next challenge would be to design computer games that actually work over a DTN...
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Servicemen from Telkom were seen releasing large numbers of kestrels and falcons along the route of the proposed test.
When asked for a comment, a Telkom spokesperson said "We intend to prove that IPoAC is prone to sudden and catastrophic packet loss due to unanticipated natural events."
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
The truck is going to be more efficient in burst mode, but the T1 is going to be more efficient in sustained.
As to which is faster, then it is going to be the truck, on the condition you ignore the time to do the paper work, driver breaks, loading and unloading, so on and so forth.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
My moneys on the Pigeon, as long as there is more than one being sent out with the same packet. That whole Eggs/Basket thing makes me hedge my bet.
Can anyone imagine a Pigeon DDoS attack?
I've seen the discussions of the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes, or a 747 loaded full of DVDs. I think you guys are calculating the bandwidth incorrectly. You ought to be assuming saturation of the medium. In the case of station wagons, this means multiple station wagons back-to-back completely filling the available roadway.
On a real network, peak throughput is measured at saturation and we should therefore measure sneakernet throughput at saturation as well. What this boils down to is the time it takes for a certain amount of data to pass a given point in space. So suppose the pigeon carries 4GB of data a distance of 80 km. Assuming a pigeon is roughly 20 cm long, then a stream of pigeons flying back-to-back in this space would be 400,000 pigeons. Supposing the voyage takes three hours (probably an overestimate) this gives a saturated bandwidth of 400000*4GB/10800 s which is about 150 GB per second.
I have serious doubts that the land network can achieve throughput of 150 GB per second.
You, sir, have too much spare time!
The race was neck and neck with a slight advantage to the pigeon. Then BAM!! Out of no where an illegal poacher ended the event prematurely.
Where the postal carriage was pitted against the semaphore tower.
And the semaphore company had /exactly/ the same "shoddy/overpriced" rep.
I wonder what their upload speed is? If it is asynchronus, they won't be able to touch the bird.
...devoted to the development of trained Hawks/Owls to take out the competition.
"In another IT development, local businesses are suffering data transmission losses at an unprecedented rate. One local health official (who asked to remain unidentified) attributed the losses to an increase in Avian Influenza in the region..."
Since you can easily buy 16 GB micro SD cards the Pigeon can do at least four times better. I'd actually bet they could carry several micro SD cards and do even better. Heck I predict a Moore's Law type curve when soon Pigeons will be carrying a TB of data across the country with impunity and much to the dismay of the RIAA/MPAA.
The next challenge is an elderly slug.
The pidgeon could probably land somewhere, lay eggs and raise young pidgeons and it will still be there before Telkom.
Whats the heaviest package a pigeon can carry? would they be able to handle a 3.5" HDD?
Go read Terry Pratchett's "Going Postal", and then tell me that this isn't spooky.
the pigeon won.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
In the late 1970's in New Zealand, The General Post Office (at that time, Telecom was included) compared transferring data about toll calls via a dedicated line, or disks in the back of a car. The car win hands down! I was in the IT department then.
Pfft, in my hometown in China, real men would burn CDs and carry them on foot, board and unboard buses, again on foot rather than transfer the data over the net.