Firm enlists Winston the homing pigeon to transfer data - because he's faster than broadband

[Are_grits_groceries]

A company is to start using a carrier pigeon to transfer data between its offices - because bosses believe it will be quicker than broadband.

IT experts at a firm in South Africa said it takes up to six hours to transfer four gigabytes of encrypted data between two of its offices which lie 50 miles apart.

Today staff at the financial services company will save valuable time by instead having the information transported by a homing pigeon named Winston.

Workers will attach a memory card containing the data to bird's leg and let nature take its course.

Experts believe the specially-trained 11-month-old pigeon will complete the flight in just 45 minutes - and at a fraction of the cost.
<snip>
Kevin added: 'For security reasons the information on the memory card attached to Winston has to be very thoroughly encrypted, as it contains personal details of people who call our centre.

'With modern computer hacking, we're confident well-encrypted data attached to a pigeon is as secure as information sent down a phone line anyway.

'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.'

Broadband internet in South Africa is not as widespread as in the UK.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1212214/Company-enlists-Winston-homing-pigeon-carry-data-transfer--faster-broadband.html?ITO=1490

Muh...

[htuttle]

1. The latency might be terrible, but the packet size is huge

Sneaker-Net still makes a lot of sense sometimes.

[lapfog_1]

2. When I worked at NASA,

we routinely (almost weekly) did a large "tape exchange" with a sister NASA center (we stored copies of their data, they stored copies of ours). I was often asked by management why we didn't send the data over the various networking options available. My reply was "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 stuffed with D3 tapes". Of course, there was a corollary... "The latency sucks".

[Crabby Appleton]

3. RFC 2549 - IP over Avian Carriers with Quality of Service

Network Working Group D. Waitzman
Request for Comments: 2549 IronBridge Networks
Updates: 1149 1 April 1999
Category: Experimental


http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2549


IP over Avian Carriers with Quality of Service


Status of this Memo

This memo defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet
community. It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind.
Discussion and suggestions for improvement are requested.
Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1999). All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

This memo amends RFC 1149, "A Standard for the Transmission of IP
Datagrams on Avian Carriers", with Quality of Service information.
This is an experimental, not recommended standard.

....snip

[Canuckistanian]

4. Sounds like a modified version of IPoAC

Internet Protocol over Avian Carriers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers

I see that Winston has a mention on the page already.