Stop That Pigeon...The One Faster Than The Internets!

[Fierce_LiNk]

Hehe, seeing the Dick Dastardly love in the other thread inspired me a little bit for the title for this one.

 

A member of staff at Unlimited IT, based in South Africa, complained about the speed of his data being transmitted on ADSL by the country's biggest web-firm, Telkom. He claimed that "a carrier pigeon could send the data faster."

 

"We renown ourselves on being innovative, so we decided to test that statement," Unlimited's Kevin Rolfe told the Beeld newspaper.

 

So, the challenge commenced:

 

An 11-month old pigeon, with a 4GB memory stick attached

 

Vs.

 

Telkom, the Country's biggest web firm.

 

The data was to be sent from Unlimited IT's call centre in Howick to the company's office in Durban - a distance of 60 miles.

 

There were strict rules in place to ensure the pidgeon had no unfair advantage.

 

They included "no cats allowed" and "birdseed must not have any performance-enhancing seeds within".

 

So, who won?

 

It took the bird one hour and eight minutes to travel, and a further hour to upload the data onto the system. In that same time, the data transmission by ADSL had only transfered 4% of the data...

 

Meanwhile 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.

 

South Africa is one of the countries hoping to benefit from three new fibre optic cables being laid around the African continent to improve internet connections.

 

Source: BBC

 

~ ~ ~

 

Pigeons rule the world.

Edited September 10, 2009 by Fierce_LiNk

[Konfucius]

Read it in the paper today. Maybe Telkom should make the service Pigeon based in that area

[Dannyboy-the-Dane]

Now, THAT's embarrassing!

[Shino]

I doubt most people here have enough upload speed to send 4GB in under an hour.

[Raining_again]

That's insane. Nice find flinkeh!

 

Back to good old snail (pidgeon!) mail?

[jayseven]

Pidgeons fly at 60mph?! That's insane.

 

But yeah - 4gb? They were truly never going to win that competition, were they.

[Ginger_Chris]

It's not really fair. The pigeon is only half duplex rather than full duplex. And latency is appalling. If I filled and lorry full of hard drives, I could send hundreds of terrabytes of data in a few hours anywhere in the country, faster than anyone can send data via existing networks. Even throwing a 8gb flash drive across a room is faster than networks can send it.

 

Pigeons routinely fly an average of 30mph over long distances during races, 40mph if well bred. 60 is far too fast.

Edited September 10, 2009 by Ginger_Chris

[Fierce_LiNk]

True, maybe there is some dispute regarding the size of the data being transfered.

 

But, my bet is that the initial size of data which that staff member was transfering was 4GB. Which then traveled slowly, and which he claimed "Could be transfered faster by pigeon." That's my bet. Hence why it was done with that particular size.

 

Still, a fun challenge.

 

Do not underestimate your office workers...or pigeons.

[D_prOdigy]

It's not really fair. The pigeon is only half duplex rather than full duplex. And latency is appalling. If I filled and lorry full of hard drives, I could send hundreds of terrabytes of data in a few hours anywhere in the country, faster than anyone can send data via existing networks. Even throwing a 8gb flash drive across a room is faster than networks can send it.

 

Pigeons routinely fly an average of 30mph over long distances during races, 40mph if well bred. 60 is far too fast.

 

Is it an African or a European pigeon?

[Ginger_Chris]

Is it an African or a European pigeon?

 

Depends on the mass and aerodynamics of the fash drive in question, I suppose if two pigeons were carrying it, tied to both their legs, they could go faster.

[EEVILMURRAY]

Do not underestimate your office workers...or pigeons.

I'll bear that in mind if one ever shits on me, "At least it has fast data speeds" :p

 

Is it an African or a European pigeon?

This does bring up the possibility of using unladen swallows, maybe they'll perform faster.

[McPhee]

I doubt most people here have enough upload speed to send 4GB in under an hour.

 

But most can do better than 25kbps, especially given this is corporate broadband rather than home.

 

The pigeon winning was inevitable even on a decent connection. It shouldn't have won by such a distance though, the guy could have cycled there and done the whole lot himself in under the 10 hours it'd take that connection to upload the file

[EEVILMURRAY]

If they'd sent it over MSN it wouldn't have been a problem.

[Shino]

But most can do better than 25kbps, especially given this is corporate broadband rather than home.

 

The pigeon winning was inevitable even on a decent connection. It shouldn't have won by such a distance though, the guy could have cycled there and done the whole lot himself in under the 10 hours it'd take that connection to upload the file

 

Searched the article and can't find mention to the exact speed. 25 Kbps would take a lot more than 10 hours to transfer 4GB and the fact that it was at 4% with 2 hours of upload means they probably have around 128kb of upload, not at all uncommon.

 

As funny as the idea behind the article is, its completely different things.

[Cube]

If they'd sent it over MSN it wouldn't have been a problem.

 

It would have failed at 98%...

[EEVILMURRAY]

It would have failed at 98%...

Would've gotten further than 4% though chap, now that's pr0 speed.

[McPhee]

Searched the article and can't find mention to the exact speed. 25 Kbps would take a lot more than 10 hours to transfer 4GB and the fact that it was at 4% with 2 hours of upload means they probably have around 128kb of upload, not at all uncommon.

 

As funny as the idea behind the article is, its completely different things.

 

You're right, got my bits and my bites the wrong way round. 186kbps, which I still pretty poor. Speedtest.net has that as below average for domestic standards, never mind business.

Edited September 11, 2009 by McPhee