Pigeons' Bandwidth Advantage Quantified 462
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..."
Ha! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Funny)
This joke was probably already made already, but my slashdot pigeon hasn't made it here yet... might've got sucked into a jet engine... poor bastard.
SB
The lag will be a problem, though... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.)
Re:The lag will be a problem, though... (Score:3, Informative)
excuse for a lame story... (Score:3, Interesting)
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 furn
Re:The lag will be a problem, though... (Score:5, Funny)
But I think there is work on extending the TCP/IP protocols for interplanetary missions, so timeouts etc might be OK?
I'm pretty sure you'd get 100% packet loss trying to use avian carriers for interplanetary communication.
I guess when the bird died, it would send an ICMP message back about the timeout by falling on your head.
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Funny)
So while regular wired methods might not work nearly as quickly over short distances, they're much better to be used internationally.
Oh wait, what's that foot mean next to the article...?
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Funny)
The big problem to my mind is cat-in-the-middle attacks.
Re:Ha! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Informative)
But... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:But... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:But... (Score:5, Funny)
-
Re:But... (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:But... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:But... (Score:4, Insightful)
Squawk!
Re:But... (Score:4, Funny)
I have 25 fully grown hens at my house. Each is able to carry at least 1 hard drive containing 280 gig. When chased by the 3 cocks I have these hens have been known to fly at a forward speed of about 30 km/hr for a distance upwards to 100m. So these hens should be able to carry a message of 7,000 Gig over 100m in just 9 sec. This would be about 7 times faster than a 10/100 line at max. My chickens should be at least as good as a Cat5e 10/100 Connection. Providing my Cocks are feeling sexy.
A substantial increase in efficiency for single transmissions can be achieved by throwing out some scratch mix. This performance boost is followed by a significant degrading of the transmission rate for several hours.
If the freezer gets empty this transmission rate may suffer a substantial decline.
the correct term would be: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:But...But... (Score:4, Funny)
You can eat [exoticmeats.com] the pigeons (squab, actually) when they arrive.
And yes, just like chiken, but better.
Re:But...But... (Score:5, Funny)
Sometimes they come with notes attached.. it's like fortune cookies with wings!
Back of envalope (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Pong (Score:5, Funny)
Ping time is twice that. Doh!
Re:Pong (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Back of envalope (Score:3, Funny)
Sorry. Had to. It was there.
Re:Back of envalope (Score:5, Funny)
African or European?
Re:Back of envalope (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Back of envalope (Score:5, Informative)
~11m/s
two quick thoughts. (Score:3, Funny)
can we now rate MBps in MPH?
latency v. bandwidth (Score:4, Informative)
Re:latency v. bandwidth (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:latency v. bandwidth (Score:5, Informative)
"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 [catb.org] 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 (Score:5, Funny)
That makes them carrier pigeons!
Re:latency v. bandwidth (Score:3, Informative)
Incorrect. The bandwidth would remain constant - what would double if the distance doubled is what is usually called a "bandwidth-delay product". This quantity represents the pipe capacity of a given length, or in other words the amount of data in transit at any given moment. This is of course assuming you have an unlimited number of pigeons you can keep sending out.
You would be correct, using the term bandwidth loosely, if the number of pigeons stayed constant. However, using the strict definition, bandw
Re:latency v. bandwidth (Score:5, Informative)
I was just saying that what is doubled in this case is the pipe capacity and latency; the bandwidth part stays the same.
Re:latency v. bandwidth (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:latency v. bandwidth (Score:3, Informative)
But even by the more recently accepted definition of bandwidth, you're not quite right. Latency *does* matter when we're talking about packet networking such as pigeon based transport. What if a pidgeon dies in transit? In this case it'll take you up to three hours to learn of his demise, and only then can you send the inf
Re:Back of envalope (Score:4, Informative)
Anm
Re:Back of envalope (Score:4, Funny)
Well, since it was a network of sorts... (Score:3, Funny)
packet loss? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:packet loss? (Score:5, Funny)
But oh so tasty!
Re:packet loss? (Score:5, Funny)
If You don't know what I'm talking about, dust off your copy of GTA3 and tune into Chatterbox...
Re:packet loss? (Score:4, Funny)
No Blackadder quotes yet? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:packet loss? (Score:3, Funny)
new firewall technology (Score:5, Funny)
Re:new firewall technology (Score:5, Funny)
Wow! That gives a new meaning to the error message "Carrier Lost"
Mandatory joke (Score:5, Funny)
A little more "Birdseed for Thought" (Score:4, Informative)
This FAQ [interbug.com] answered that question and many others for me.
let's get this joke out of the way early (Score:5, Funny)
Re:let's get this joke out of the way early (Score:5, Funny)
Re:let's get this joke out of the way early (Score:3, Funny)
And here's the implementation [linux.no] by the Bergen LUG.
Here's the output (NOTE THOSE PING TIMES):
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
--- 10.0.3.1 ping statistics ---
9 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 55% packet loss
round-tr
Sure (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sure (Score:3, Informative)
One of those things that shouldn't surprise but... (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:One of those things that shouldn't surprise but (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:One of those things that shouldn't surprise but (Score:5, Informative)
Re:One of those things that shouldn't surprise but (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:One of those things that shouldn't surprise but (Score:5, Funny)
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
Re:One of those things (Advance Warning: Offtopic) (Score:3, Funny)
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]
Re:One of those things that shouldn't surprise but (Score:3, Funny)
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,
Protocol stack (Score:5, Funny)
Time to switch (Score:5, Funny)
Monty would be proud . . . (Score:3, Funny)
What about packet loss? (Score:5, Funny)
plop plop plop (Score:5, Funny)
Insert obligatory joke here about "dropping packets"....
MD5 hash... (Score:5, Funny)
What, no packet loss... (Score:5, Funny)
at the risk of getting shat on: (Score:5, Funny)
Fetch me porn (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Fetch me porn (Score:3, Funny)
It begins... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it already April 1st somewhere?
Re:It begins... (Score:3, Funny)
In many senses, it's April 1st everyday at Slashdot.
Re:It begins... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It begins... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It begins... (Score:3, Informative)
Is it already April 1st somewhere?
That may well be the case, but stranger things [eagle.auc.ca] have happened.
Pigeon DNS (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Pigeon DNS (Score:4, Funny)
As for latency issues, a clever engineer should be able to manipulate the protocol in such a way to reduce round-trips. I would keep all transfers over UDP, not TCP.
Fat Pipe Pigeons.. (Score:5, Funny)
Well, DUH! (Score:5, Funny)
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).
April 1st? (Score:4, Funny)
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 [freedos.org] - 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.
The problem with pigeons... (Score:3, Funny)
Response Time, Thoughput, Reliability: Pick Two (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
The RIAA and MPAA... (Score:5, Funny)
Big deal! (Score:5, Funny)
but the pigeon carrier signal can be attacked (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
No fair... (Score:5, Funny)
Not a fair comparison against DSL...they multiplexed the pigeons. This is just more anti-DSL FUD
;P
Noteworthy incompatibility: (Score:5, Funny)
In fact, I would recommend not using ANY kind of cat technologies with this protocol.
Of course. FedEx is still the fastest transfer (Score:4, Insightful)
but seriously (Score:4, Informative)
New RFP's... IP over ??? (Score:3, Interesting)
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?)
Todays Monty Python (Score:3, Funny)
African or Europen
What? I Dont know
AHHHHHHHHHHHH
Wow! (Score:3, Funny)
Well, when the pigon does what pigons do, is that considered an ICMP-Packet-Administratively-Denied?
Re:Lets see what happens if... (Score:5, Funny)
We can't attach them there.
That's where the frickin' lasers go.
Re:My car is better (Score:5, Insightful)
How long does it take you to load 10,000 DVDs in your trunk? Not to suggest that you still wouldn't beat the pigeons, but I don't think your time would be as good as you are hoping.
Would that be considered "great bandwidth"?
Yes, but that latency would not be considered so great.
Besides, if they can use 3 pigeons, why not compare it to 3 DSL lines?
You could, or you could compare one pigeon with dial-up. Or you could compare with an 18-wheeler instead of the trunk of your car.
Lighten up - this is a great hack! And better than another SCO story.
Re:RFC 1149 - IP datagrams on avian carriers (Score:3, Funny)
<A href=http://www.blug.linux.no/rfc1149/>http://www
It's been implemented!
Paul