Pigeon flies past broadband in data speed race

Pigeon flies past broadband in data speed race

www.bbc.co.uk

Broadband is the most modern of communication means, while carrier pigeons date back to Roman times.

But on Thursday, a race between the two highlighted the low speeds of rural broadband in the UK; the pigeon won.

Ten USB key-laden pigeons were released from a Yorkshire farm at the same time a five-minute video upload was begun.

An hour and a quarter later, the pigeons had reached their destination in Skegness 120km away, while only 24% of a 300MB file had uploaded.

(visit the link for the full news article)

It is pretty bad when a carrier pigeon is faster than using the internet to share a video.
Later in the article:
""The farm we are using has a connection of around 100 to 200 Kbps (kilobits per second)," Tref Davies, the stunt's organiser, told BBC News on Thursday morning."

I would *love* to get 100-200kb/s average. As it is, I am lucky to get 100kb/s, and that is from a good server.

It is a shame really that Labours only good idea (the broadband tax to allow faster broadband in rural areas) was scrapped.

www.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by Emphursis


Just imagine the speeds you could obtain with high-speed pigeons.........

HRMMM......

1. Put USB drives on carrier pigeons
2. ???
3. Profit

Yeah, but who wants to get their porn from a pigeon?

The awkwardness factor alone would just kill the entire concept right from the start.

And the poor pigeons....

I know someone who maintains carrier pigeons for communication purposes and both he and his pigeons are quite good at it. If the SHTF, it is going to be these pigeons who we will rely on if we ever want to see a free society again. We should never underestimate the importance of communication pigeons. Also, the insurgency in Afghan/Iraq was/is using birds to communicate. All of the spying technology in the world isn't going to do anything against the tried and true pigeon.

--airspoon

Originally posted by Emphursis
I would *love* to get 100-200kb/s average. As it is, I am lucky to get 100kb/s, and that is from a good server.

Oh dear. I would assume my internet was broke if I got that! I complain if it dips below 4 MB/s!

Originally posted by Emphursis
It is a shame really that Labours only good idea (the broadband tax to allow faster broadband in rural areas) was scrapped.

It wasn't a good idea though. It was an unfair tax on everyone to benefit a few. The telco's are looking into ways to get faster broadband to rural area's cost effectively, you just have to be patient.

Good article though, funny too!

Originally posted by airspoon
I know someone who maintains carrier pigeons for communication purposes and both he and his pigeons are quite good at it. If the SHTF, it is going to be these pigeons who we will rely on if we ever want to see a free society again. We should never underestimate the importance of communication pigeons. Also, the insurgency in Afghan/Iraq was/is using birds to communicate. All of the spying technology in the world isn't going to do anything against the tried and true pigeon.

--airspoon

*note to self, add pigeons to the list*.. Ahem!.. Oh

This is an old story lol, Notice how also the leading god damned telecommunications provider fails to result at all!

And *NOW* everyone is bringing out 1TB plans, 500GB on peak 500GB off peak - it's a race and finally these nobs have listened... Telstra or Bigpond now have 200GB plans... WOW... 200gb a month for $69 - that is as long as you dont exceed that quota as then you are shaped back to 64kbps.. At least iiNet have done the right thing and made the shape 128kbps.. Ever tried to read ATS on 64kbps? So many god damned google ads you click the X before you grow old...

Carrier pigeons people.. We need 'em. We should make it mandatory to have at least 10 of them, so we can send the things we need to each other... The last episode of Breaking Bad, The latest cam rip of Inception, and yes... yes, with birds we can even sends tweets.

Carrier pigeons FTW I say!!!

well my the broadbands is quite alright too thanks julia gillard...

reply to post by airspoon

If the SHTF, it is going to be these pigeons who we will rely on if we ever want to see a free society again.

If the SHTF bad enough...those pigeons are going to start looking mighty tasty.

Food may be more of a priority than communication...in some scenarios.

reply to post by badw0lf


I avoid any capped usage plans. I get 50mbps off Virgin for around £60 a month (including phone and HDTV) and have no capped usage. They do traffic shaping during peak hours though, which is different to actually capping your usage, but that means my Steam downloads are around 3MB/s not the usual 6MB/s, so no real complaints. I just wait till night time and get the full speed!

Virgin are also trialling a project which sees them deply fibre over the BT telegraph poles, so they can reach rural towns and villages easily without ndigging up the roads. If this takes off, they will dominate the market. It is similiar to what my employer did in the later 90's when rolling out their fibre network. They used the National Grid HV pylons to carry the core fibre routes, instead of doing the traditional digging of trenches.

Originally posted by stumason
reply to post by badw0lf

 

I avoid any capped usage plans. I get 50mbps off Virgin for around £60 a month (including phone and HDTV) and have no capped usage. They do traffic shaping during peak hours though, which is different to actually capping your usage, but that means my Steam downloads are around 3MB/s not the usual 6MB/s, so no real complaints. I just wait till night time and get the full speed!

Virgin are also trialling a project which sees them deply fibre over the BT telegraph poles, so they can reach rural towns and villages easily without ndigging up the roads. If this takes off, they will dominate the market. It is similiar to what my employer did in the later 90's when rolling out their fibre network. They used the National Grid HV pylons to carry the core fibre routes, instead of doing the traditional digging of trenches.

Jiminy cricket... You want to hope they dont catch the bug we've got - we pay for UPLOADS too now. I send you a MB and I pay for sending it the same as you pay for receiving it.

But your 60 pound is about $120AUD a month iirc. for the 1 TB plan here you pay $99AUD a month as long as you bundle their phone. thats 500GB from 9am till midnight and 500GB from 12:01 till 7:59am - I dont have a hard drive big enough to fill 1 TB each month. and since they have brought in upload counts too(on the sneak I might add - it was not obvious until you changed plans as I did frequently, so bah to that - sorry mr torrent) I have been checking my total bandwidth and on average Im ok with my plan. Oh but Im on a higher one so I get capped to 256kbps which means web pages dont actually time out every 3 seconds.

still, there is talk of other countries following suit. I cannot see it happening where you are, but the US might cop it eventually.

Man, I want to live in the netherlands, with 100/100mbps to the house.. those buggers!

reply to post by airspoon


but cant they only go from one remembered place to another.?

it's not like you can give them an adress and a map and off they go.

How do you get pigeons to deliver to a specific address? Weary minds want to know.

also 300mb is not a small file, it is quite large. how is this comparable to a carrier pigeon.

a carrier pidgeon would not be able to even carry 300mb of text if it was printed on paper.

so i would say that the broadband is faster than the pigeon, because the maximum it could carry would be sent in seconds on even 1mb broadband.

Originally posted by Emphursis
...I am lucky to get 100kb/s, and that is from a good server.

It is a shame really that Labours only good idea (the broadband tax to allow faster broadband in rural areas) was scrapped.

Hmm. Sounds like what will happen if Net Neutrality gets scrapped in the States...

'Tis the difference between "Public Service" and "private product."

...The REAL kicker is our tax dollar$ funded R&D for broadband technology.

lol

reply to post by MR BOB


The pigeons had USB sticks, someone didn't read the article properly

They carried the exact same amount of data over the exact same distance, but quicker. Quite amusing, if not very practicle, unless you want some sort of rural point to point network.

If you had lots of pigeon, you could some sort of Dense Pigeon Wave Multiplexing going on .. Might even be able to rival the 10Gb/s fibre channel ccts we provide on optical systems if you had enough pigeons or larger USB sticks!

Hmm, might suggest that at the next team meeting...

This is quite funny.
It's only the upload speed that are terrible in the UK though, I have a download speed of around 10mb and upload of 450kb
So whats needed is obviously some kind of Asynchronous system that uses my full bandwidth for downloads and pigeons for the upload

reply to post by stumason


well duh, im not a dumbass. of course i know it had a usb stick, its not going to carry a freaking filofax.

o come on people a polibisty stunt nothing more .
The File will take the SAME download (upload ) time if its sent to Chine or the us . Lets see a pigeon fly 3000 miles in two hours .
Maybe on a short flight sure but after that no pigion can keep up even at dial up say 3.5 kb per .
the file may take a month to get to china But teh pigion will drop dead trying lolol

This little race makes a VERY good case for Net Neutrality, and defining broadband as a "public service" in the USA.

Which it SHOULD be, because our tax dollar$ funded R&D for broadband technology.

Hullo.