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Topic: Homing Pigeon Faster Than Internet? (Read 802 times) |
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Benny
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Homing Pigeon Faster Than Internet?
« on: Sep 12th, 2009, 12:25pm » |
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Which is faster: Carrier pigeon or Internet?
I just couldn't believe what I heard on the news, then I went to google it to find articles about this...
Pigeon beats Internet firm in data transfer race
Sometimes 12th-century technology wins??
How is this possible?
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SMQ
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Re: Homing Pigeon Faster Than Internet?
« Reply #1 on: Sep 12th, 2009, 2:19pm » |
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on Sep 12th, 2009, 12:25pm, BenVitale wrote:
Because the metric used was "time to transfer 4GB of data 50 mi." 4GB is still a fair amount of data for non-broadband internet, but will fit on a single thumb drive, so if all you want is to move the data from A to B the internet might not be your best option. On the other hand, the lag really sucks over carrier pigeon...
There's an old adage that says the fastest data link in the world can't beat a truck full of backup tapes for bandwidth. I believe it's still true today!
--SMQ
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towr
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Re: Homing Pigeon Faster Than Internet?
« Reply #2 on: Sep 13th, 2009, 1:35am » |
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It's been done before, a few years ago. Although internet was slower then too, of course.
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Benny
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Re: Homing Pigeon Faster Than Internet?
« Reply #3 on: Sep 13th, 2009, 9:45pm » |
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... The pigeon won by a long shot, arriving in two hours, six minutes and 57 seconds. Meanwhile, the company, which regularly transfers data between its 11 call centers, managed to transfer only 4% of the data using Telkom's broadband services.
Source: http://hothardware.com/cs/forums/t/44816.aspx
I didn't know that the US broadband speeds lag far behind other nations...
U.S. Broadband Speeds Lag Far Behind Other Nations, And Are Improving Slowly
It is, in fact true, that American broadband isn't exactly up to par with other countries, however. In fact, if you look at recent studies, you can see just how far behind the United States is. A comparison done by Speed Matters and released in August showed that the average Internet download speed in the U.S. has increased by only 1.6 megabits per second (mbps), from 3.5 mbps in 2007 to 5.1 mbps in 2009.
That might sound good, but not when compared to South Korea with an average data rate of 20.4 mbps, or four times faster than the U.S. The United States ranks 28th in the world in average Internet connection speeds
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Grimbal
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Re: Homing Pigeon Faster Than Internet?
« Reply #4 on: Sep 14th, 2009, 4:44am » |
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on Sep 13th, 2009, 1:35am, towr wrote:| It's been done before, a few years ago. Although internet was slower then too, of course. |
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The speed has increased but so has the capacity of flash drives and optical storage. I think a pigeon can win anytime in the future if the amount of data is chosen carefully.
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| « Last Edit: Sep 14th, 2009, 4:44am by Grimbal » |
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towr
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Re: Homing Pigeon Faster Than Internet?
« Reply #5 on: Sep 14th, 2009, 6:17am » |
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on Sep 14th, 2009, 4:44am, Grimbal wrote:
The speed has increased but so has the capacity of flash drives and optical storage. I think a pigeon can win anytime in the future if the amount of data is chosen carefully. |
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A pigeon wouldn't win around here.
It would depend on there being large areas with underdeveloped internet infrastructure in the future.
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