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..."
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
Sure (Score:5, Interesting)
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
My car is better (Score:2, Interesting)
I can throw 10,000 DVDs in my trunk, and drive 100km in an hour. Would that be considered "great bandwidth"? Besides, if they can use 3 pigeons, why not compare it to 3 DSL lines?
Re:One of those things that shouldn't surprise but (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It begins... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Back of envalope (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
Re:It begins... (Score:4, Interesting)
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: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:latency v. bandwidth (Score:2, Interesting)
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?)
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 furniture, etc, I would be surprised if anyone was within two orders of magnitude of the "correct" answer.
the bandwidth of a station wagon (Score:2, Interesting)
It made me laugh picturing this guy writing this. Because this is the guy who would suspend production servers from ropes dangling from ceiling AC ducts.