this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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Yes, a Pigeon is Faster for Data Transfer than Gigabit Fiber Internet::A decade ago, a pigeon with a 4 GB memory stick outran an ISP’s ADSL service. A 2023 rematch features a bird with 3 TB of flash drives vs gigabit internet.

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[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 210 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Yeah, but having that ping time of 36,000,000ms really kind of sucks.

[–] Tar_alcaran@lemmy.world 141 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Error-correction for dropped packets is also pretty shit.

[–] Rocketpoweredgorilla@lemmy.ca 73 points 1 year ago

oh, that's what's on my car.

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[–] Bobert@sh.itjust.works 133 points 1 year ago (4 children)

"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of magnetic tapes hurtling down the highway"

[–] MeanEYE@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Interestingly enough NASA still sends data this way. Huge HDD delivered by hand. Not all data, but I remember reading about some satellite images and similar data where latency doesn't matter. Can't beat good old box full of HDD.

[–] smitty@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

yep, radio telescopes send data this way, thats how SETI@home got the Arecibo data

[–] glorious_albus@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

I wondered why NASA was using pigeons till I read the rest of your comment.

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[–] Agamemnon@lemmy.world 47 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Haha, in some parts of germany you can do that yourself. on foot. with a zipdisk.

[–] rockSlayer@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Good ole sneakernet. It's hard to have dropped packets when they're delivered by hand

[–] c10l@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s not. Just drop the storage device in a manhole, or get mugged, or break it in some way. Also when you do so, pretty much all packets are lost and to retransmit you need to go back to the point of origin and make a new copy, assuming you still have the original.

[–] rockSlayer@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Recovery after a lost packet is pretty awful, I'll give you that

[–] CazRaX@lemmy.world 43 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Can't help but think that they are rigging this for the bird. Just calculate how long it takes the bird to get from here to there and then pick a capacity that takes longer to download.

[–] Steve 56 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That's kind of the point though. It's not about practicalities.

There is an ancient proverb.
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of magnetic tapes."

[–] theharber@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway. –Andrew Tanenbaum, 1981

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[–] nous@programming.dev 16 points 1 year ago

There are no winners or losers here and they are not suggesting you start uploading things via pigeons, just gives a more interesting way to talk about and get people to think about how large volumes of data can and are still moved around via trucks and ships.

[–] Sludgeyy@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Yes and no.

If you could put a 1 petabyte flash drive on a pigeon, it would easily crush the gigabit internet

Does a 1 petabyte flash drive exist? Could it exist?

They put 3 stripped-down terabyte flash drives on the pigeon. Could it carry more weight?

You get to the point where the pigeon can't carry the weight.

All this is saying that sending data by pigeon can be faster and using 3 tb sticks proves it.

If it needed to be 4 tb, then they would have had to use 4 sticks. If it couldn't carry 4 sticks, then you have your answer that the pigeon can't do it with current technology.

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

We need to RAID pigeons in case of hawk outage.
More redundancy!

[–] rmuk@feddit.uk 11 points 1 year ago

RAID: Redundant Avians Indemnifying Death

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[–] Crul@lemm.ee 40 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] meldroc@lemmy.world 32 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck full of flash drives. The latency's most annoying though.

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[–] devbo@lemmy.world 28 points 1 year ago (3 children)

its like they choose 3 TB because they knew it was the smallest amount that would lose. lets make it a real re-match and go back to transfering 4 GB.

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[–] FartsWithAnAccent@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lag is a real bitch though...

[–] Crozekiel@lemmy.zip 35 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yea, and packet size is enormous, so one lost packet is catastrophic...

[–] nxdefiant@startrek.website 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is why you use TCP: Trusted Concurrent Pigeons.

Trusted Pigeons so that a simple hash check can prove the veracity of your data AND provide a free dedupe / data integrity check for when multiple/single packets arrive.

Concurrent Pigeons so that transmission issues don't impact latency (throughput is essentially unlimited here, assuming sufficient pigeons)

Downsides include needing to implement a pigeon cache and power (birdfood) requirement increases.

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[–] Boldizzle@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

When can I start using a pigeon to preload games like Starfield?

[–] lateraltwo@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Used to be called "install disks" that you would have to preorder for the convenience of having it available at your local game store

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[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I'd like to see that pigeon fly from Sydney to New York.

[–] Asymptote@lemmy.dbzer0.com 27 points 1 year ago

I wouldn't. Sounds boring.

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[–] PM_ME_STEAM_KEYS@reddthat.com 23 points 1 year ago

This reminds me of the age when the egregiousness of home Internet data overage charges in Canada reached their zenith, with some back of the napkin math, I realized it would be more cost effectuvd to buy and fill a solid state drive (which had only begun to come down in price) with stuff, ship it overnight international, and then destroy it after downloading its contents, than to hit the overage charge limit with my provider.

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Get back to me when a pigeon can deliver high-speed porn.

[–] orrk@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

it already can, multiple terabytes at once

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[–] drahardja@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

I wrote a similar blog post recently, about magnetic tapes in minivans. https://www.humancode.us/2023/02/03/a-minivan-full-of-magnetic-tape.html

[–] irdc@derp.foo 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)
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[–] pontata@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Is the time of loading and downloading the files from the flash drives of the pigeon included?

[–] nous@programming.dev 10 points 1 year ago

Yes it was. Though he did use faster SSD drives rather then cheaper and slower flash drives. Which is something reasonable to do IMO. He also tested various network transfer methods to use the fastest one and transferred unique data to each drive rather then just uploading the same file over and over giving both sides a fair but also their best shot at working.

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[–] Tar_alcaran@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of ~~tapes~~ flashdrives hurtling down the highway.

[–] Robin@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

For price per TB, modern tapes might still be a valid choice actually. But maybe not great for read/write performance. I guess that depends on how many tape drives you have on each end.

[–] BustinJiber@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I can carry way more HDDs than that weakass stupid pigeon. So what I can't run to save my life.

Isn't gigabit internet more about amounts of data you can transfer rather than the overt speed that is not important to average user?

[–] quantumantics@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] TimeNaan@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

What's the ping on that bird?

[–] imgonnatrythis@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I was lucky enough to have 2Gb fiber introduced to my area recently - I have to say I rarely notice meaningful differences over my lowest tier cable connection. I pull 1400Mbs on router based tests, but routine endpoint speed tests are 300-700 range. Was 30 on prior connection. Can run more stuff all at once, but still get occasional streaming delays, 5min of low resolution streams, routine downloads are about the same. Now that Mullvad has dropped port forwarding, this pigeon system is sounding pretty attractive.

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