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..."

Ha!

[dolo666]

So essentially, we should unplug all the cables and just get a bunch of shithawks?

But...

[michaelhood]

the DSL doesn't shit on my car.

packet loss?

[sporkboy]

the response time for packet loss is prohibitive... may as well get satellite

new firewall technology

[Triumph The Insult C]

12 gauge shotgun i'm applying for the patent right now

Mandatory joke

[davebarz]

There will be at least ten comments that say (even though it's a pigeon and not a swallow): "Was it African, or European?"

let's get this joke out of the way early

[stephenb]

the relevant rfc [ietf.org]

Now....

[oO Peeping Tom Oo]

To get a RAID on their backs....

Hidden disadvantage of broadband...

[twigles]

In a pinch you can't eat your cable modem.

Protocol stack

[DRUNK_BEAR]

Finally, I can start implementing my MORSE OVER IP OVER PIGEON CARRIER protocol stack!!

Time to switch

[unbiasedbystander]

That's it, I'm switching to PSL. (Pigeon Subscriber Line)

Monty would be proud . . .

[ygbsm]

"What is the average velocity of a data-laden pigeon . . ."

It doesn't matter where it grips it...

[Raynach]

A 5 ounce bird cannot carry a 4 GB coconut!

What about packet loss?

[Jack Zombie]

You'd lose both a huge amount of your data and your only connection should something happen to those pigeons. Still, it's more reliable than AOL.

Well then

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like the final barrier to widespread internet access in the Palestinian quasi-state has been surmounted.

Re:packet loss?

[oGMo]

the response time for packet loss is prohibitive...

But oh so tasty!

;-)

plop plop plop

[frostyboy]

Insert obligatory joke here about "dropping packets"....

Re:packet loss?

[MikeXpop]

pong **** CARRIER LOST

Ummm...

[Brian Kendig]

The bandwidth might be good, but the latency stinks... just try playing networked Quake 3 over that!

MD5 hash...

[addie]

I feel sorry for the pigeon who needs to be hashed on the other end to check if it's the same one... that's gotta hurt.

What, no packet loss...

[GeneralEmergency]

...induced by hungry hawks?

at the risk of getting shat on:

[t_allardyce]

Try wiretapping that you FBI bitches

Re:Back of envalope

[Bobdoer]

African or Europen? Well, someone had to say it.

Pong

[Fammy2000]

3h 54Mins

Ping time is twice that. Doh!

Fetch me porn

[superpulpsicle]

Now if I can train my pets to fetch me playboys from local 7-11s, I am as good as without broadband.

Re:Back of envalope

[Anonymous Coward]

> Not bad for laden little pigeons

Bin Laden has pigeons now??? It all makes sense!

Re:Back of envalope

[The Fink]

Okay, having done that, when are you going to work out the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

Sorry. Had to. It was there.

What Next?

[An-Unnecessarily-Lon]

Pony Internet Express?

Lets see what happens if...

[Bob C. Cock]

we replace those tiny 4 GB memory cards with 1.44 MB floppies. Lets see how far those flying rats get with 4 GB of floppies attached to their frickin' heads.

Pigeon DNS

[Doesn't_Comment_Code]

That's all fine and good if you know where you're sending your packets. But what if you have to do a DNS look up? Then you have to send several scout pigeons to the nearest aviary which will in turn send a pigeon back with a map of where to send your data pigeons.

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.

two quick thoughts.

[Archangel Michael]

What is that in Library of Congress'?

can we now rate MBps in MPH?

Re:new firewall technology

[GnuHaiku]

12 gauge shotgun i'm applying for the patent right now

Wow! That gives a new meaning to the error message "Carrier Lost"

Fat Pipe Pigeons..

[kortex]

..but can they stream?

Re:Sure

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah but who wants to wait 9 hours to then find the webpage they wanted to view was lost at baggage collection.

Well, DUH!

[purduephotog]

The Worlds Record for Data Transfer in a Station Wagon" [dlttape.com]

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).

Re:Mandatory joke

[Anonymous Coward]

Does yours count?

Re:let's get this joke out of the way early

[cbv]

RFC1149 was updated by RFC2549 [ietf.org] in 1999.

Ping times

[thorgil]

Yeah but the ping times suck right...

Stack a 747 full of writable dvd's and you get hell of a bandwidth...

Or even better...

Put em on a superfreighter class ship... /T

Re:new firewall technology

[Neil Blender]

12 gauge shotgun i'm applying for the patent right now

Your firewall will be useless against a peck flood.

Re:Lets see what happens if...

[Mr. Bad Example]

Lets see how far those flying rats get with 4 GB of floppies attached to their frickin' heads.

We can't attach them there.

That's where the frickin' lasers go.

What no Coconuts?

[C. Alan]

Data! Thats boring!

I want to know the Coconut Transfer rate of a Swallow.

And to make this reference complete....

both African and European Swollows!

April 1st?

[Jim Hall]

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.

Re:Ha!

[Trejkaz]

Absolutely, I've been using avian carriers for my connection for years, and never had a #%!@#70824645[CARRIER LOST]

Re:It begins...

[Neil Blender]

Is it already April 1st somewhere?

In many senses, it's April 1st everyday at Slashdot.

Re:But...

[Capt'n Hector]

Apparently you don't have comcast.

Re:Ha!

[stephenisu]

What is the air speed velocity... um... I mean Data Transfer rate of a homing pigeon...

Re:packet loss?

[Anti_Climax]

"Pigeons... Pigeons are good too. Sometimes, they come with notes attached. It's like a fortune cookie with wings!"

If You don't know what I'm talking about, dust off your copy of GTA3 and tune into Chatterbox...

Re:RFC 1149 - IP datagrams on avian carriers

[proberts]

You've obviously missed the bigger joke-

<A href=http://www.blug.linux.no/rfc1149/>http://www. blug.linux.no/rfc1149/</a>

It's been implemented!

Paul

Watch out

[Anonymous Coward]

when PETA learns about their firewall!

Re:But...

[rjelks]

I'm picturing what a Denial of Service attack would be like.....Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" comes to mind.

-

The problem with pigeons...

[eth1]

is all the 'packets' they drop

moral of the story

[ctime]

"Never underestimate the bandwidth of shithawks carrying tiny memory cards"

Well...

[oldosadmin]

Hey, and if you're hungry, eat your bandwidth!

Re:Pigeon DNS

[DrWhizBang]

You raise some good points. PGP can address some of these issues. Additionally, protecting your Wide Avian Network with a good firewall, and using a secure tunnel (Virtual Pigeon Network) when transporting pigeons outside the local network.

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.

Re:But...But...

[value_added]

You can eat [exoticmeats.com] the pigeons (squab, actually) when they arrive.

And yes, just like chiken, but better.

The RIAA and MPAA...

[plnrtrvlr]

...is trying to turn all of our isp's into Stool Pigeons anyways.

African or European Pigeon?

[bthomp]

Since of course the air speed velocity of an african swallow... I mean pigeon...

Big deal!

[greg_barton]

I trrew my DVD collection across the room yesterday. That's 1 terabyte per second, right?

No fair...

[j-turkey]

During the test, 3 homing pigeons carried 4 GB (gigabytes) for 100 km distance

Not a fair comparison against DSL...they multiplexed the pigeons. This is just more anti-DSL FUD
;P

Re:let's get this joke out of the way early

[fbform]

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-trip min/avg/max = 3211900.8/5222806.6/6388671.9 ms

Noteworthy incompatibility:

[diesel66]

"The technology eliminated the need for cat 5..."

In fact, I would recommend not using ANY kind of cat technologies with this protocol.

Re:Back of envalope

[RabidStoat]

It was the one being chased by the SCO lawyer.

DSL works at night

[Anonymous Coward]

Try getting those pigeon to fly at night or during bad weather. HA!

Re:Fetch me porn

[LostCluster]

Has anybody bothered to compute the bandwidth represented by a typical issue of Playboy? Sure, the articles can be represented in text... but the high-resolution images is really what the magazine is about.

Re:Pong

[DeadPrez]

Yeah, even with client prediction, Quake is going to be a bit of a bitch!

Re:Ha!

[daveashcroft]

April 1st anyone? (regarding: http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html)

Re:packet loss?

[nkh]

Actually:

• pigeon-based satellite technology will work by catapulting the pigeon to the sky and
• ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) technology will work by chopping the pigeon into small rounds and throwing it in the air, hoping the wind will carry it to its destination.

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

[kfg]

Actually, that's a working pace for a pigeon. They were working hard, but not really what you could call "trying." Birds are fast.

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

No Blackadder quotes yet?

[pjt33]

We didn't receive any messages, and Captain BlackAdder did not shoot this delicious, plump-breasted pigeon.

OH MY GOD!

[ziggamon]

Imagine being slashdotted by pigeons!


Some people would say this has already happened [imdb.com]

Re:But...

[John Hurliman]

Actually if the pigeons were the communication medium, a denial of service might be a shotgun.

Re:Ha!

[spacecowboy420]

This is slashdot, not the world!;-)

Re:The lag will be a problem, though...

[Anonymous Coward]

There is an old saying -- "Don't underestimate the bandwidth of a truck loaded with magnetic tape".

Wouldn't that be vanwidth?

Re:But...

[MonkeyGone2Heaven]

Would those be considered dropped packets?

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

[kfg]

Duck homing is pretty precise. I have ducks and geese in my "backyard" (the Mohawk River) who manage to find the exact same favorite pool every year from whatever far flung warmer clime they spend it in (the bastards).

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, "Yeah, right Sparky. Blow me. Why don't you just run along and carry it yourself? Or maybe ask that stupid pigeon. I'll bet he'll do it. A pigeon will do anything. Just ask that Skinner dude."

Which is why no duck has ever won a Crouix de Guerre. On the other hand no duck is standing on his remaining leg stuffed in a museum either.

The ducks like it that way.

That isn't to say that a duck won't oblige by carrying a message, but it'll go when he wants, where he wants.

If that happens to coincide with your needs, fine and dandy, if not, well, tough noogies.

KFG

Re:But...But...

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Sometimes they come with notes attached.. it's like fortune cookies with wings!

Re:But...

[Jose]

yea, and at 2.27 Mbps (Mega birds per second), that would be quite intense!

Re:Ha!

[schmink182]

The problem with pigeons is that they don't scale well over large distances. Not only does packet delivery take much longer for when distance is increased, but reliability goes way down, too.

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...?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Ha!

[YOU LIKEWISE FAIL IT]

but reliability goes way down, too.

The big problem to my mind is cat-in-the-middle attacks.

Todays Monty Python

[Bruha]

What's the average speed in megabits of a laden sparrow.

African or Europen

What? I Dont know

AHHHHHHHHHHHH

Re:The lag will be a problem, though...

[the_mad_poster]

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:Back of envalope

[shiftless]

Okay, having done that, when are you going to work out the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

African or European?

Re:Ha!

[Bush Pig]

It probably depends a bit on how many coconut shells it's carrying ...

Free Internet access for everybody! Think of it!

[ajutla]

We are obviously on the verge of a revolution in communications and networking! Clearly, if it turns out that Internet can be cheaply had via pigeon, the price of broadband will drop, and millions of homes all across America will soon be wired (or "flown" or "pigeon-linked" or whatever it'll eventually be called) into our glorious information superhighway! Millions will be able to enjoy the Internet and will be able to use it productively, to improve the quality of their lives, and download tons of free porn! The world shall become a more enlightened, happier civilization! And it'll all be thanks to the pigeons! God bless them!

Re:One of those things (Advance Warning: Offtopic)

[dreggory]

"That fat body is all wing flapping muscle"

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]

What about RIAA and the DMCA?

[joaodk]

When they find out that this technology can be used to transfer copyrighted material, and therefore showing up as a potential infringement, those pigeons are going to be in a whole lot of trouble.

After all, why on earth will somebody want to transfer 4 GB of data in such a unlawful and secret way? :)

you dirty pirates!

Re:But...

[antic]

It's almost an April Fool's Prank.

But then I realised that the actual April Fool's joke on Slashdot this year was the ad for the OSDN Singles dating site saying "Your options are endless".

Endless indeed: endless numbers of overweight males, confined indoors. Great.

More puns!

[Motie]

The problem is, a single packet drop could actually kill someone.

Re:But...

[Throtex]

Well, I hope for the security of your system, you close all the documented pigeonholes.

Re:latency v. bandwidth

[MemoryAid]

these pigeons have no bandwidth

That makes them carrier pigeons!

the correct term would be:

[lysium]

That would be more of a packet storm.

Re:Back of envalope

[CyberKnet]

AAAaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!!

Re:Ha!

[gstoddart]

Do you mean a TCP pigeon or a UDP pigeon? =)

Yeah thats nice...

[OmegaBlac]

but do these "pigeons" run Lin...sorry wrong thread. :)

It's not even tomorrow yet...

[atheken]

UHG! I am turning off my computer for tomorrow... SLASHDOT BE DAMNED! hahahahahahahahahaha

Well, since it was a network of sorts...

[SuperKendall]

I'd say it was 5Cats.

Wow!

[buss_error]

And here I thought TCP/IP stood for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. Little did I know it realy ment Trained Carrier Pigon/Inflight Pigon.

Well, when the pigon does what pigons do, is that considered an ICMP-Packet-Administratively-Denied?

Re:Ha!

[shadowbearer]

Ah, but European TCP pigeons might have an advantage over African UDP pigeons....we need to finance another study! Come on, this is Important!

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

Re:Ha!

[pedrop357]

Both and IPX/SPX. Can't beat these new layer 2 pigeons...

Pigeon Sniffing...

[Anonymous Coward]

cool! now I can socially engineer my way onto the network with just a loaf of bread! ;-)

-AC

Re:Ha!

[Mateito]

> Do you mean a TCP pigeon or a UDP pigeon?

I'm inclined to say that its UDP as there was no three-way handshake to establish the connection and no acknowledgement packets sent by the receiver.

Having said that, Pigeons are OSI layer 1, so you can't lay the blame on them.

Re:Ha!

[Mateito]

> The problem with pigeons is that they don't
> scale well over large distances. Not only does
> packet delivery take much longer for when
> distance is increased, but reliability goes way
> down, too.

> So while regular wired methods might not work
> nearly as quickly over short distances, they're
> much better to be used internationally.

All wired methods suffer the same problems with reliabilty as distance increases. That's why you need to install repeaters.

Normally the wire has a male jack, and the repeater a female socket. With pigeons this could introduce excessive delay and introduce long term unexpected artifacts.

Re:But...

[cluckshot]

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.

SCO again!

[Patlag]

I just ear that SCO will suit every companies using the virtual pigeon network. They argue that they have patents on the Pigeon DNA so every people using or feeding pigeon have to buy them a license.

Re:Ha!

[Patlag]

We could boost the connection speed (like tweeking MTU for TCP/IP) with Steroid Hormones!

by the way this network communication media may be a little bit unstable (bunch of packet lost) around airport zone.
Here is the proof
http://www.ansys.com/industry/defense/solutions_ar ticles/flaturbine_fall_2001.htm [ansys.com]

Re:Ha!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just stupid the RIAA will still be against the P2P (Pigeon to Piegeon) networks ...

[groan]