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 M¢87  Funded By Mahalo ? |  September 10, 2009 01:48 AM

Will carrier pigeons make a comeback?

Electronic transfer of data is very fast, but when you have gigabytes of data it starts seeming rather slow. The problem is bandwidth. Meanwhile, data cards have been getting tiny in size and huge in gigabyte capacity. A South African company just showed it could send a mass of data via Winston, a pigeon with a data card strapped to his leg, 50 miles in a fraction of the time it took to send the data by Telecom. Has the day of the pigeon returned?
http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSTRE5885PM20090909
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goldy goldy
 
 September 10, 2009 01:55 AM
Well, although that is interesting, i don't think it will catch on, as those results were on one race against one data connection, with countries like south korea having blazing fast internet, at a fraction of what us"westerners" are paying.

The real question is when will our ISPs and phone companies catch up.

(south korea had fibre optic lines installed in the mid 90's as a government inititive to get everyone on in the country to have the best connection possible)
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Tags: speed, data, internet

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albanian albanian
 
September 10, 2009 02:10 AM
ISP's may improve. But so may pigeons. Winston was only carrying a 4 GB SD card. He or other pigeons could easily carry several 16 GB microSD cards without working up a sweat. And Winston is an amateur. In the old days there were highly trained expert Carrier Pigeons.

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goldy goldy
 
September 10, 2009 02:12 AM
But as ISPs improve and their services become cheaper and faster, I think it will be cheaper to use data connections, as they are possibly more secure(of course the data can be encrypted on the sd cards) but also probably cheaper and less time consuming than training birds. The only time i can see this being useful is in certain warzones

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stanar stanar
 
September 10, 2009 01:46 PM
some of the issues in this method:

1. a big security hole and data loss by interception
2. point to point only
3. training the birds

Maybe this can be used in a place where there is no network, but need to deliver digital data. we could GPS tag the bird and the encrypted storage. with a self destruct device if it goes off track with a threshold.

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albanian albanian
 
September 10, 2009 01:57 PM
Carrier Pigeons were used with great success during both World Wars by the military. One can hardly imagine a greater need for security than that of the military during war, so it's an odd concern to bring up. The messages of the time were encoded. The current example naturally encrypted the data on the data card. It is a heck of a lot harder to intercept a pigeon than an electronic communication, the latter can be done from across the world. To intercept a pigeon you have to be on the spot, maybe with a trained hawk or such like. And the main defense is encryption either way. Training and feeding pigeons is much cheaper than training and feeding network specialists. The other drawbacks mentioned do point to niche applications, perhaps.

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macmarlon macmarlon
 
September 10, 2009 01:55 AM
I think you stand a better chance via electronic transfer then by carrier pigeon... The chances of the carrier pigeon being intercepted carrying your important documents are probably greater then by electronic transfer... That and less messy then hundreds or maybe thousands of carrier pigeons... Just my opinion...

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psionandy psionandy
 
September 10, 2009 02:31 PM
Not to mention the possible DDOS attacks cause by hackers with Eagles... (hawkers?)

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albanian albanian
 
September 10, 2009 03:01 PM
Sure a good hawker could do a denial of service attack better than a good hacker. But, any kid with an internet connection anywhere around the world can become a hacker. It's not so easy to become a falconer and raise falcons, and you'd have to be right there, and it would be pretty hard to hide your activities. Carrying a shotgun loaded with birdshot around in urban or suburban areas would be quite a problem too. Start blasting away at pigeons and you'd be jailed pretty quick with or without data.

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