[alskdjreyfd]

in South Africa.
A pigeon can send a 4GB file over 60 miles in 2 hours[thumbup], much faster than broadband (which will take about 50 hours to perform the same feat [no]) in South Africa! If I lived in that country, I would like to have one of those pigeons!

But is there any way to prevent cats from eating my carrier pigeon?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8248056.stm

[VotsUtegems]

But how many people transfer 4GB of data over 60 miles? I get most of my stuff from the use which is over 3000 miles and get download 4GB in about an hour with my ADSL2+ connection. But ADSL is a completely different story (depending on connection speeds)

[CVEGK7mV]

What's amazing in the Pigeonnet is that a 64GB SDHC Memory Card would be transferred just as fast as the 4 GB in the test. Even faster as it's lighter to carry than the USB Memory Stick!

[kubekniekubek]

Well what if that pigeon is carrying pictures of you naked in these files and he drops it off at the wrong house. It could happen.

[irresseni]

[thumbup] love those carrier pigeons!

[DoctorTOneery]

Its fast, but the packet loss of this method of data transfer is terrible

[Srewxardsasv]

it sounds like technology in general is just lacking behind there.

an hour to transfer 4GB of data with a memory stick? Thats like 10Mbit/sec.

Even older memory sticks are 170 or so mbit/sec, or am I mistaken.

[Sandvikla]

This sort of article is so misleading. A pigeon carrying a memory stick is an obscure scenario, and these pigeons can't really be directed to go to whatever house you want on a few seconds notice can they? They also give no consideration to how long it takes to transfer the data onto the memory stick and then read it off the stick at the other end. Then they provide a percentage of total transfer instead of just giving an average transfer rate, to further obscure the facts. And 60 miles? the strength of the Internet is not that you can transfer data 60 miles, but you can transfer it 600 miles and beyond.

It just has no sensible relation. You could send a hard drive with a terrabyte of data by express post to a few towns over and it would go faster than South-Korean broadband, but what does it mean? Not much.

[ChuttyAmult]

This sort of article is so misleading. A pigeon carrying a memory stick is an obscure scenario, and these pigeons can't really be directed to go to whatever house you want on a few seconds notice can they? They also give no consideration to how long it takes to transfer the data onto the memory stick and then read it off the stick at the other end. Then they provide a percentage of total transfer instead of just giving an average transfer rate, to further obscure the facts. And 60 miles? the strength of the Internet is not that you can transfer data 60 miles, but you can transfer it 600 miles and beyond.

It just has no sensible relation. You could send a hard drive with a terrabyte of data by express post to a few towns over and it would go faster than South-Korean broadband, but what does it mean? Not much.

It was simply a publicity stunt to demonstrate the inadequate connection provided.

Also the 2 hours included an hour to transfer the info from the memory stick.

[12Dvop4I]

now all they have to figure out is how to ping a pigeon to know its there [rolleyes]

there ya go, new term coined "Ping a Pigeon" - Slade_x 2009, your welcome

[MontyP@thon]

It seems like it could be vulnerable to a man in the middle attack. How long would an RSA handshake take?

[exchpaypaleg]

Didn't the article say ADSL and not broadband? That's a huge difference..

I am too much of a geek to find that interesting..

[markshome23]

Didn't the article say ADSL and not broadband? That's a huge difference..

I am too much of a geek to find that interesting..

In South Africa ADSL is broadband. 4Mbit ADSL is as good as it gets down here. [help]
You can go 7.2Mbit on HSDPA, but for the price per MB... it's only useful for browsing, and not downloading.

[12Dvop4I]

Didn't the article say ADSL and not broadband? That's a huge difference..

I am too much of a geek to find that interesting..

DSL/ ADSL is broadband since it works over the standard POTS system in relation to the early analog voiceband series of modems which maxed out at 56kbps.

Any data transmittion protocol / compression that results in more bandwidth over another since it provides a wider band or broaderband for data transmittion is considered broadband.

ADSL currently tops out at 24Mbps, in terms of the average consumers internet connection speed, ADSL is still a considerably high bandwidth line; broadband

[ziIReIGS]

it sounds like technology in general is just lacking behind there.

an hour to transfer 4GB of data with a memory stick? Thats like 10Mbit/sec.

Even older memory sticks are 170 or so mbit/sec, or am I mistaken.

SA has the same computer stuff as anywhere else, it just costs a bit more. We get new things whenever Europe does. I agree though, I don't know where they got that figure from. It takes me a few minutes to transfer 4GB to a memory stick.

[realfan87]

Didn't the article say ADSL and not broadband? That's a huge difference..

Um no there's not. ADSL is broadband.