Pigeon beats broadband in data transfer race | Hacker News Reader

Pigeon beats broadband in data transfer race

programmica.info

14 pointsedw51913 comments

Everyone should know it's the latency that matters, not the throughput. However, this is proving to be a very popular story on HN.

http://searchyc.com/pigeon?sort=by_date

shows various comments already scattered through these HN items:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=816329

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=815840

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=815593

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=815501

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=814443

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=813313

Everyone should know it's the latency that matters, not the throughput.

Depends entirely on the problem you are trying to solve. Sometimes DVDs in the post really is the best solution. I've done it on more than one occasion.

Of course. I was kind-of assuming everyone here would recognise and appreciate the reference to this article:

http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/rants/Latency.html

Perhaps I was wrong.

Article with a little more info, and a picture of Winston (the pigeon):

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1212214/Co...

...pitted a homing pigeon carrying 4GB of data on a USB stick against its broadband connection...

Instantly double throughput with an 8GB USB stick.

I have a 32GB USB stick somewhere, that's an 8-fold throughput increase. I'm guessing my 500GB portable hard drive would be a bit too heavy for a pigeon . . . I suppose you could do packet bursting by strapping the hard drive to several pigeons.

Half of the time was spent getting the data from the stick onto the computer, while only half was spent with the pigeon flying.

So, it will go up, but with quickly diminishing returns.

> However, he admits the plan is not without its difficulties: "There are other problems, of course. Winston is vulnerable to the weather and predators such as hawks. Obviously he will have to take his chances but we're confident this system can work for us,' says Rolfe.

They might need to retransmit once or twice a month too . . .

Redundant pigeons would reduce the data loss, although maintenance costs would rise.

They also should have mentioned that transferring 4GB of data in South Africa will set you back ~$30.

probably true for a lot of places http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet

If two pigeons had a line between them, they could carry a 1TB drive. Or maybe four pigeons. With something like a flying hammock.

I think the key question is: are pigeons migratory?

(I am really, really sorry, but this article was just too much for a Monty Python fan. And it's a Saturday too)

Obligatory RFC 1149 reference: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149

We may have to update the old "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes..." chestnut.

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