Carrier Pigeons faster than DSL

gullCouldn’t help laughing at this story having spent a lot of time in South Africa in the 1990′s. Seems that they had a race to see if DSL or carrier pigeon could transfer 4GB of data faster over 100km. Guess what…the pigeons won.

Great summary on this link by Stan Schroeder

Whats interesting is that broadband speed is a function of the total network design and its usage so trying to define how fast the Internet can be pretty difficult given the uncontrolled nature of complex networks. On the other hand the physics of carrier pigeon speed, distance and the reality of memory card capacity make for a much more deterministic transport method <grin>…. Maybe we can have a race between an iPhone and a cheetah next :)

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 10th, 2009 at 6:57 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Carrier Pigeons faster than DSL”

  • Siva Says:
    October 25th, 2009 at 5:40 pm

    Funny indeed. Speaking of iPhones and network usage – I came across this AT&T wireless report article that reminded me of you & Hyperconnectivity. They found that for the first time, smartphones were the No. 1 users of WiFi hot spots. We are at the curve of the hockey stick :-)

    http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2009/10/gauging_the_mobile_web.html

    Regards
    -SS-

  • Peter Says:
    October 29th, 2009 at 10:47 pm

    I look back with fondness at my time at Nortel and well remember your great insight and forward thinking on the purchase of the 3D sound company. This deal was a real game changer and I was proud to be at Nortel when I heard about this purchase at your GIS.

    Hopefully our paths will cross again,

    your buddy, Peter.

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