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Carrier Pigeon Officially Beats DSL
'11-month-old bird armed with a 4GB memory stick...'
The other day we noted how some disgruntled Telkom DSL customers in South Africa planned to pit a carrier pigeon versus their sluggish DSL line in order to see which one could transmit 4GB of data faster. You'll be happy to know the BBC has been keeping up with the story (with video), and reports that the carrier pigeon delivered 4GB of data 60 miles in a little over an hour -- while the DSL line had only completed 4% of the same 4GB transfer. Telkom, the recovering South Africa monopoly telco, tells the BBC they "are not responsible for the firm's slow internet speeds."
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anon
@199.198.223.x

anon

Anon

Eureka.

They solved it. Define broadband as something that can carry data faster than a pigeon!!

Mr Fel
INTJ - The Architect
Premium Member
join:2008-03-17
Louisville, KY

Mr Fel

Premium Member

Re: Eureka.

Don't go off giving them ideas, they'll just go and define in terms of SUVs here.
raptor1418
Premium Member
join:2002-12-03
Denver, CO

raptor1418 to anon

Premium Member

to anon
And their new caps would be based on the max amount you could actually strap to a pigeon!! Though I bet they would go with the amount of 128MB sticks they could attach to the pigeon.

tad2020
join:2007-07-17
Orange, CA

1 edit

tad2020 to anon

Member

to anon
That'll work for me, 4GB by Carrier Pigeon per hour works out to just over 1MB/s (about 9mbps)

dellsweig
Extreme Aerobatics
MVM
join:2003-12-10
Campbell Hall, NY

dellsweig to anon

MVM

to anon
As Time Warner likes to say in the road runner ads - "Beep Beep"
CyrusDaVirus
join:2009-06-05
Houston, TX

CyrusDaVirus

Member

not that bad

better then dial up atleast. just think of the latency the pigeon adds lol

Smith6612
MVM
join:2008-02-01
North Tonawanda, NY
·Charter
Ubee EU2251
Ubiquiti UAP-IW-HD
Ubiquiti UniFi AP-AC-HD

1 edit

Smith6612

MVM

Re: not that bad

The pigeon does have a lot of latency, but he sends bigger packets

Also the ISP is the fault for slower speeds, after all it's their network and sending the file inside of the continent to a location nearby won't cause many slowdowns, unless of course the ISP is being cheap!

tad2020
join:2007-07-17
Orange, CA

tad2020

Member

Re: not that bad

And the package loss would be horrible, the resend on a packet that takes 360,000ms/mile would suck.

Anyone else notice that a carrier pigeon network is similar to token ring.
iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Austin, TX

iansltx to Smith6612

Member

to Smith6612
The whole pigeon net thing gives a ew meaning to "jumbo frames"

I wonder what the spectrum restrictions are in South Africa. If I remember correctly there's a lot of flatlands that could make for good wireless distribution and if they have 2.4 and 5.8 GHz regions available a wireless internet provider could come in and at least offer high-bandwidth domestic connectivity.

tenpin784
I Went To The Dark Side?
join:2001-03-30
Brierfield, AL

tenpin784

Member

that

is awesome!

Quite an amusing story.
ruffldroostr
join:2005-01-24
Saint Louis, MO

ruffldroostr

Member

Most connections would have a hard time beating that pigeon

With my uverse 12 meg pipe I would be sitting right about the same time as the pigeon...assuming I was getting around a meg/sec. Nonetheless, if you only did 4% of that, that is pretty bad by any 'broadband' standards.

Logan 5
What a long strange trip its been
Premium Member
join:2001-05-25
San Francisco, CA

Logan 5

Premium Member

Online gaming via pigeon....LOL

Reminds me of the old "play by turn" mail in games of the early 90's....

I cant believe tho in all seriousness that the ISP in question isn't taking any responsibility for this... Are there no laws in South Africa to regulate these types of things?

This wouldn't fly (pun intended ) in a place like the US... imagine if AT&T tried that... Oh wait... they already have with the iPhone & MMS/Tethering...
quote:
Telkom said it could not be blamed for slow broadband services at the Durban-based company.

"Several recommendations have, in the past, been made to the customer but none of these have, to date, been accepted," Telkom's Troy Hector told South Africa's Sapa news agency in an e-mail.

wifi4milez
Big Russ, 1918 to 2008. Rest in Peace
join:2004-08-07
New York, NY

wifi4milez

Member

Re: Online gaming via pigeon....LOL

said by Logan 5:

Reminds me of the old "play by turn" mail in games of the early 90's....
I hope you mean the 1890's, since its been going on a lot longer than 20 years! My grandfather used to play chess via mail, right up until his death last year (see note below my avatar). I remember it would take him a few months to play each game, and he was totally fine with it.

furlonium
join:2002-05-08
Allentown, PA

furlonium

Member

Re: Online gaming via pigeon....LOL

said by wifi4milez:
said by Logan 5:

Reminds me of the old "play by turn" mail in games of the early 90's....
I hope you mean the 1890's, since its been going on a lot longer than 20 years! My grandfather used to play chess via mail, right up until his death last year (see note below my avatar). I remember it would take him a few months to play each game, and he was totally fine with it.
That's awesome. What would the letter say? "Hey Bob, how are things? blah blah blah..." or simply "1.e4"?

wifi4milez
Big Russ, 1918 to 2008. Rest in Peace
join:2004-08-07
New York, NY

wifi4milez

Member

Re: Online gaming via pigeon....LOL

said by furlonium:
said by wifi4milez:
said by Logan 5:

Reminds me of the old "play by turn" mail in games of the early 90's....
I hope you mean the 1890's, since its been going on a lot longer than 20 years! My grandfather used to play chess via mail, right up until his death last year (see note below my avatar). I remember it would take him a few months to play each game, and he was totally fine with it.
That's awesome. What would the letter say? "Hey Bob, how are things? blah blah blah..." or simply "1.e4"?
If I recall there was a little (friendly) 'trash talking' with each move. Overall it was pretty humorous!
pawpaw
join:2004-05-05
Asheville, NC

1 recommendation

pawpaw to Logan 5

Member

to Logan 5
said by Logan 5:

I cant believe tho in all seriousness that the ISP in question isn't taking any responsibility for this... Are there no laws in South Africa to regulate these types of things?
Yes, there are numerous government regulations. These are the full explanation for the abysmal service.

cowboyro
Premium Member
join:2000-10-11
CT

1 recommendation

cowboyro

Premium Member

RFC-1149

Maybe they should take RFC-1149 more seriously now
OmagicQ
Posting in a thread near you
join:2003-10-23
Bakersfield, CA

OmagicQ

Member

Re: RFC-1149

said by cowboyro:

Maybe they should take RFC-1149 more seriously now
RFC 1149 was superceded by RFC 2549....gotta have QOS

aefstoggaflm
Open Source Fan
Premium Member
join:2002-03-04
Bethlehem, PA

aefstoggaflm

Premium Member

Wireless is for the birds :)

^^

patcat88
join:2002-04-05
Jamaica, NY

patcat88

Member

south africa and internet

South Africa=third world

Why are we assuming they will have internet better than DSL with fractional T1 speeds for $120/mo? What else can you expect with a national telco monopoly located in a banana republic with extreme wealth inequality, urban decay, rolling blackouts, and large rural/1 story housing areas, and 70% of population has electricity (USA=%99.999?) and 50% has flush toilets? Next we will be hearing that SA National Telco is blocking VOIP, with govt permission.

Downward Ho
@sonnet.com

Downward Ho

Anon

Re: south africa and internet

South Africa was less third world a couple of decades ago. Now it is reaching parity with the rest of Africa. Following the path of Zimbabwe.
GlobeSA
join:2008-04-05

GlobeSA to patcat88

Member

to patcat88
patcat88,

Banana republic? I didn't know racism was allowed on this forum.

Haven't had rolling blackouts in SA for more than a year but more importantly, it's quite ironic that you use that to identify a third world country, when rolling blackouts are not uncommon in 1st world countries either. California have had several rolling blackouts during the last decade. 2000 and 2005 in particular. BBC headline news last week - 1st world UK will have rolling blackouts in the years to come since they can't keep up with elec demand either.

As for broadband:
Telkom used to be the monopoly, but South Africa actually has a second national telco as well, Neotel, and all the major cellular providers are building their own national fiber networks.

For decades the only undersea cable linking South Africa with the rest of the world was the Telkom owned SAT3 cable, providing little intl bandwidth.
However, this year SEACOM launched the second undersea cable (1.28Tbps) and there's a further 5 undersea cables being built:
GLO-1, West Africa, 640Gbps, ready for operations, 2009
TEAMS, East and Southern Africa, 120Gbps – Due September 2009
EASSy East and Southern Africa, 1Tbps – Due June 2010
MainOne, West Africa, 1.92Tbps, due 2010
WACS, West and Southern Africa, 3.8Tbps, Due 2011

This drastic increase in international bandwidth capacity will obviously drive down the prices quite dramatically withing the next year or two. South Africa may be considered third world compared to the USA but they're miles ahead the rest of Africa.
patcat88
join:2002-04-05
Jamaica, NY

patcat88

Member

Re: south africa and internet

said by GlobeSA:

As for broadband:
Telkom used to be the monopoly, but South Africa actually has a second national telco as well, Neotel, and all the major cellular providers are building their own national fiber networks.
Neotel is a cellphone provider for residential purposes, FAIL!

Where is local loop unbundling? where is FTTH or rural copper? Except for its cellphone division, Neotel is as much a competitor to the ILEC as Level 3 is a competitor to Verizon or ATT in the US, except for its cellphone service Neotel won't do anything about Telkom's prices or be a real competitor.

»www.neotel.co.za/neotel/ ··· age84327 Makes Verizon's 5GB cap look generous.

It owns submarine cable capacity which is good. If I wanted to really create a useless ILEC competitor, I wouldn't give them the power legislatively to internationally connect out of SA forcing them to get access internationally through Telkom, at "free market" principles (extortion prices).
ricep5
Premium Member
join:2000-08-07
Jacksonville, FL

ricep5 to GlobeSA

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to GlobeSA
Agreed, SA is definitely not third world.

Social issues aside for a moment, they are the most modern and produce the highest GDP of any African nation. While they do contain a significant set of mineral assets which contributes to their trade of balance, they currently suffer from waste and graft in the govt. sector of which they are still trying to overcome.

Social issues inserted. Telkom, while a near monopoly suffers from some regulatory issues not to dissimilar from its power generation cousin Eskom. Several government mandates to provide unpaid services in certain areas produces a capital constraint as they can't raise rates to cover the cost of provision. Vodacom & MTN suffer no such constraints on wireless services and can fund long term infrastructure like fiber.

Personally I used Telkom DSL in the Cape and it performed quite well (2Mbps). This story, while amusing could happen in any country, 1st world or otherwise. A bad DSLAM port, water leaking onto a terminal, signal loss at the residence all could impact the quality. Telkom unresponsive? Hah! How many posts in this site describe unresponsive carriers?!! Enough said.

cpsycho
join:2008-06-03
Treadeu Land

cpsycho

Member

Question?

What happens if along its route the pigeon was DPI'ed?
AstroBoy
join:2008-08-08
Parkville, MD

AstroBoy

Member

Someone might sniff my pigeon/packet! :)

That bird needs a bath!

Someone might hack my pigeon/data.
Ash3r
join:2007-08-02
Winfield, BC

Ash3r

Member

Re: Someone might sniff my pigeon/packet! :)

what happens if the cat eats the pigeon?

tubbynet
reminds me of the danse russe
MVM
join:2008-01-16
Gilbert, AZ

tubbynet

MVM

was there any doubt...?

call me a cynic, but did anyone doubt that this wouldn't work?
my wife's grandfather raised pigeons for racing. he was very into the sport and won several awards for having the "fastest bird". given the speed of flight, if you could put a big enough card on the pigeon in a way that it would not be lost in flight, of course you're going to win.
had they not won, would you see them strapping an 8gig or 16gig flash drive to the pigeon just to get a victory?

q.
neufuse
join:2006-12-06
James Creek, PA

neufuse

Member

100+mbit

heck put a 64GB+ flash drive on there and now you have outragious speeds hehe

heat84
DSLR Influencer
join:2004-03-11
Delray Beach, FL

heat84

Member

Re: 100+mbit

said by neufuse:

heck put a 64GB+ flash drive on there and now you have outragious speeds hehe
Newegg has 128GB sticks.

Crazy Dave
Formerly known as Seph83
Premium Member
join:2004-04-29
Homer, GA
Askey TM-RTL0102
Ubiquiti UDM-US

Crazy Dave

Premium Member

Hmm...

Did a math on this one...

According to the "we noted how" link, they pay just a little less than $6,000 a month for their connection... A rough guesstimate of the transfer speed of said connection was 40 - 50 KB/s, which is about 320 - 400 kbps...

I cannot fathom how an ISP can charge that insane amount for such a slow connection, unless they charge several hundred dollars a month for dial-up.

Hmm... If that's the case, then all of us in the 2nd world have it made. Even BT, for you blokes, and Telstra, for you Aussies, out there, sounds awesome in comparison! Ma Bell, FTW!!

Madness
Like a flea circus at a dog show
join:2000-01-05
Lynn, MA

1 recommendation

Madness

Member

For the Birds....

OMG, that's hilarious! Especially the picture of the bird w/ his little "backpack" on!

elios
join:2005-11-15
Springfield, MO

elios

Member

You know its coming

Ok so what IS the air speed of a SD card laden Pigeon?
tlniec
join:2004-08-02
Cedar Rapids, IA

tlniec

Member

Re: You know its coming

said by elios:

Ok so what IS the air speed of a SD card laden Pigeon?
What do you mean? An African, or a European Pigeon? (I guess in this case, we can probably assume African! )

XLIV
UFO
join:2003-02-24
Monroe, LA

XLIV

Member

Re: You know its coming

said by tlniec:

said by elios:

Ok so what IS the air speed of a SD card laden Pigeon?
What do you mean? An African, or a European Pigeon? (I guess in this case, we can probably assume African! )
lol

tempnexus
Premium Member
join:1999-08-11
Boston, MA

tempnexus

Premium Member

DoS

If you close the windows is it considered a denial of service attack?
also if you load the mem stick with MP3's then will RIAA be forced to screen every pigeon midflight?

R4M0N
Brazilian Soccer Ownz Joo
join:2000-10-04
Glen Allen, VA

1 edit

R4M0N

Member

Re: DoS

said by tempnexus:

If you close the windows is it considered a denial of service attack?
No... Just a misconfigured firewall. A DoS would be getting 1000 pigeons to go through the window at the same time.

cline3621
Mr. Yuk is MEAN Mr. Yuk is GREEN
Premium Member
join:2006-06-14
Clarksville, TN

cline3621

Premium Member

Pigeons

If you remember the GTA 3 game. There is a radio station called chatterbox with Lazlow. There was a person that called in. I personally think he found one of these carrier pigeons. Listen to the first minute.

»www.youtube.com/watch?v= ··· =related


"It's like a fortune cookie, with wings."
demoniacs
join:2007-07-17

demoniacs

Member

dsl will eventually win

you really cant expect a pigeon going from one conttinent to the other like africa to the north america.

but go pigeon, fly high and free just send the packets to meee.

shortckt
Watchen Das Blinken Lights
Premium Member
join:2000-12-05
Tenant Hell

shortckt

Premium Member

A silly comparison

This is not even apples and oranges. What, are birds now going to replace high speed internet?

Their internet service is slow, and it seems their computer is too...
The firm said Winston took one hour and eight minutes to fly between the offices, and the data took another hour to upload on to their system.
Must be a USB 1.0 port they plugged that memory stick into.