Homing Pigeon beats ADSL transfer rate

[Candlelight]

Yep, that's the subject line.

http://www.news24.com/Content/SciTe...9d4196e4/09-09-2009-12-23/Pigeon_beats_Telkom

Cape Town - Winston, a homing pigeon, has made history by beating a Telkom ADSL line in delivering 4GB of data from Howick to Hillcrest, outside Durban in just 2 hours 6 minutes and 57 seconds, whereas the ADSL download was "still just under four percent complete" at 11:45.

South Africa's most famous pigeon, left Howick just after 10:00 on Wednesday morning and flew a distance of around 70km to deliver a data card (strapped to his leg) to financial services company The Unlimited at its head office in Hillcrest.

Winston easily beat the ADSL line, despite giving it a 26 minute head start, while stretching his wings and waiting for the company data to be downloaded onto the memory card.

A confident Winston flew straight to his home in Gillits, outside Hillcrest, from where he caught a short car ride to reach the Hillcrest head office. Homing pigeons have a natural ability to find their way home from any point of departure.

Winston enjoyed huge support with messages from fans on his Facebook profile and constant tweets on his Twitter feed.

He himself also twittered several times with comments like "flying weather cloudy and cool, feeling good, no major problems to report... Hillcrest traffic is a worry".

"We came across the lesser spotted internet protocol: IPoAC or CPIP, commonly known as Internet protocol over Avian Carrier or Carrier Pigeon Internet Protocol respectively," the company said in a statement on their website.

Love it.

Pity about SA internet speeds though.

 

[firehawk12]

See, this is where I wish I wasn't a nerd, so I could just enjoy the story for what it was meant to be - a nice little fluff piece. Oh well.

 

[Miss Chicken]

I don't think my ADSL speed is any faster than South Africa's. It would take my hours and hours and hours to download 4GB.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

4GB is quite a lot of info.

Are they sure this wasn't a test of the upload speed? That's much slower with an ADSL if I remember correctly.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Yup, an implementation of RFC1149:

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1149.html

 

[Cakes488]

I like Pigeons and I don't know why they are so maligned. I feed them on the fire escape and they come when I call "Pigeito". Another example of why they are such amazing creatures. They're supposed to have the intelligence level of a 3yr old! They are in the dove family and we all need to show them a little respect and a lot of love.

 

[Shikarnov]

4GB is quite a lot of info.

Are they sure this wasn't a test of the upload speed? That's much slower with an ADSL if I remember correctly.

Of course it was the upload speed. They were sending 4GB of data, after all. The fact a non-geek moron wouldn't know the difference between uploading and downloading is, sadly, not surprising.

And upload speeds suck everywhere. I have TWC and I get a maximum of 500bps upstream. It would take quite a long time to upload 4 gigs of data for me as well. Soon I'll be getting UVerse with "mega" upload speeds of 1 - 1.5mbps. And you don't even want to know the speeds I used to get in Russia -- although, at least, they had higher upload speeds available if you could afford the cost. I've yet to see any such option with TWC or UVerse.

 

[Amaris]

I'm happy with my upload speed of 768k. My problem is the download speed, which is 1.4-1.6 MBPS. You may think that's not bad, and it's not really bad, but then again, having it be a stable connection would be better. Nothing like watching a movie only to have it start and restart 8 times because the connection dropped.

J.

 

[Shikarnov]

^^ I hear that, J... My wife and I are fans of Netflix On Demand, and it just sucks some days over my connection.

 

[Amaris]

^^ I hear that, J... My wife and I are fans of Netflix On Demand, and it just sucks some days over my connection.

I am hooked, hooked I tell you, on Netflix On Demand.

I called them up once and told them that I would pay a fee just for the service and not get DVDs, because my one DVD sits on the shelf for 3 months at a time.

J.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I like Pigeons and I don't know why they are so maligned. I feed them on the fire escape and they come when I call "Pigeito". Another example of why they are such amazing creatures. They're supposed to have the intelligence level of a 3yr old! They are in the dove family and we all need to show them a little respect and a lot of love.

Well, they're feral creatures that have overtaken cities and have no real natural predator. Aside from that, the common pigeon isn't too bad.

Homing Pigeons kick ass, though, so this is a cool story in my book.

 

[Cakes488]

Aren't all birds feral LOL? I also think all pigeons "home"...that's what they do.

Is that a crow in your avatar..no it's too small for a crow, how about a grackle? It's not a starling is it? But Pigeons do have natural predators and they're called falcons and hawks. I have to tell you there is nothing like seeing a hawk swoop down at the bird feeder trying to get an easy meal.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

4GB is quite a lot of info.

Are they sure this wasn't a test of the upload speed? That's much slower with an ADSL if I remember correctly.

Of course it was the upload speed. They were sending 4GB of data, after all. The fact a non-geek moron wouldn't know the difference between uploading and downloading is, sadly, not surprising.

And upload speeds suck everywhere. I have TWC and I get a maximum of 500bps upstream. It would take quite a long time to upload 4 gigs of data for me as well. Soon I'll be getting UVerse with "mega" upload speeds of 1 - 1.5mbps. And you don't even want to know the speeds I used to get in Russia -- although, at least, they had higher upload speeds available if you could afford the cost. I've yet to see any such option with TWC or UVerse.

The OP's quote did say "download"

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Aren't all birds feral LOL? I also think all pigeons "home"...that's what they do.

Is that a crow in your avatar..no it's too small for a crow, how about a grackle? It's not a starling is it? But Pigeons do have natural predators and they're called falcons and hawks. I have to tell you there is nothing like seeing a hawk swoop down at the bird feeder trying to get an easy meal.

I guess there are Falcons and Hawks, they just aren't all that common in cities (and tend to get hit by cars when trying to kill pigeons). Pigeons literally are feral, though, just like a stray dog or cat in a city are. They were once domesticated, but escaped.

At one point, someone told me what bird was in my avatar, but I've since forgotten. I'd imagine an Aussie would know.

 

[Cakes488]

Aren't all birds feral LOL? I also think all pigeons "home"...that's what they do.

Is that a crow in your avatar..no it's too small for a crow, how about a grackle? It's not a starling is it? But Pigeons do have natural predators and they're called falcons and hawks. I have to tell you there is nothing like seeing a hawk swoop down at the bird feeder trying to get an easy meal.

I guess there are Falcons and Hawks, they just aren't all that common in cities (and tend to get hit by cars when trying to kill pigeons). Pigeons literally are feral, though, just like a stray dog or cat in a city are. They were once domesticated, but escaped.

At one point, someone told me what bird was in my avatar, but I've since forgotten. I'd imagine an Aussie would know.

They could me more common in the cities if it weren't for all the damn people. But there are some in NYC...there could be a lot more...they can survive here... but you know people...they don't want their precious buildings being nested on. They also use bridges to nest in. I'll ask Australis if he knows what bird that is and with that this thread has gone to the birds. (sorry but the jokes can't all be winners)