Carrier Pigeon Beats Internet in South Africa

[mooncalf]

I remember reading about a network transmission protocol authored for carrier pidgeon years ago, this is one awesome viability study! I'm sure the pigeon fanciers will be pleased at this vindicating outcome. Such old tech still relevant today!

 

[FROGGEman2]

Spoiler: Their internet connection.

 

[Wagter]

You go, Winston.

In the meantime, that company needs a new net provider.

Sad thing is Telkom supplies all the broadband infrastructure to the country, so everyone is stuck with them.

 

[Treblaine]

And an hour to upload 4GB from a USB Flash drive of all things?

I have an entry level Laptop and I clocked 1 min 40 sec to upload 700MB to USB flash drive = 9 min 45 sec for 4GB

Transfer USB-stick to Comp: 700MB in only 45 sec = only 4 and a half minutes to transfer 4GB

So this article seems pretty fishy, even if the info is sourced from the BBC, why the hell is their computer reading data off a USB stick at such painfully slow speeds?

I'm guessing that you just transferred a single file? The data in question could be hundreds of small files, which would take significantly longer.

15 times longer for many small files? Unlikely.

Plus if you were just trying to put together a "payload" of 4GB, it would make way more sense to just stick a couple video files on there as it is quick to ascertain if the file(s) work (just play it) and who is going to hunt around for 40'000 word documents to make up 4GB for a simple experiment like this?

Another thing has occurred to me, they consider the one hour taken to "upload the data to their system" as part of the overall transfer time, but surely it would have taken similar if not longer to upload the data TO the usb-stick carried by the pidgin. Yet that time is not considered?

You go, Winston.

In the meantime, that company needs a new net provider.

Sad thing is Telkom supplies all the broadband infrastructure to the country, so everyone is stuck with them.

Monopoly. I mean the board game is sucky enough in real life it's just so much worse.

Why is it governments around the world let these anti-competitive practices start over and over again. The UK is only just getting a competitor to BT's internet infrastructure monopoly (Virgin Media) but the UK govt's "Digital Britain" report basically condemns our country to fall even further behind.

 

[Psy28]

I think a major contributor to the low bandwidth in S.A. is cable theft.
http://www.mg.co.za/article/2009-08-28-cable-theft-costs-telkom-r3billion

If you cant keep all your connections active it will definately cause some bottlenecks and thus you have internet at the speed of molasses.

 

[Lord_Ascendant]

slight typo

"Tthe" is in there. take a look.

other than that pidgeon win!