SA's Largest Telecomms Provider vs. a Pigeon 149
dagwud writes "Just a few days after this Slashdot article, South Africa's largest telecoms provider, Telkom (which has been taking flak for years for its shoddy and overpriced service), is being pitted against a homing pigeon to see which can deliver 4GB of call centre data logs quickest over a distance of around 80km (50 miles). According to the official website, the race is set to take place September 10."
The question is... (Score:4, Funny)
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Soldier #1: Oh, yeah, an African swallow maybe, but not a European swallow. That's my point.
Soldier #2: Oh, yeah, I agree with that.
Soldier #1: But then of course African swallows are non-migratory.
Soldier #2: Oh, yeah...
Soldier #1: So, they couldn't bring 4GB of call centre data logs anyway...
Reminds me of the quote... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Credit to Andrew Tanenbaum for that last quote..
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If it's a South African freeway, you'll have to factor in some serious packet loss due to carjackings.
Disclaimer: I'm from South Africa.
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from wikipedia:
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway. â"Tanenbaum, Andrew S. (1996). Computer Networks. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. pp. 83. ISBN 0-13-349945-6.
The original version of this quotation came much earlier; the very first problem in Tanenbaum's 1981 textbook Computer Networks asks the student to calculate the throughput of a St. Bernard carrying floppy disks (which are said to hold 250 kilobytes of data). The f
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My money is on the pidgeon.
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Dear Sir
I'm contacting you in the name of the office of the Ministery of Transport, Pidgeons and Communications of South Africa. Recently, the former minister has been abducted by aliens and therefore considered Missing In Action. He has left a huge fortune that is to be placed in a bet in a pidgeon running against a telecom. For that, we come asking for your help, as we need a second bank account to transfer the money, since we are unable to do it directly because the minister used strange passwords. I kin
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Re:The question is... (Score:4, Insightful)
I would assume African, given the locale.
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Terry Pratchett's Going Postal did this first!
Homers rule! (Score:3, Insightful)
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From TFA:
So in all probabilities, yes, it's an RFC1149 compliant pigeon.
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To paraphrase Andrew Tanenbaum (Score:3, Funny)
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of pigoens hurtling down the highway.
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- which presents a nice illustration of the difference between bandwidth and latency! :)
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- which presents a nice illustration of the difference between bandwidth and latency! :)
It presents to me more of an image requiring much cleaning up of bird crap.
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Would there be a pigeon be driving too? ;)
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Exactly.. the fact that you can out-bandwidth a network connection via Sneakernet [wikipedia.org] is not news, even for values of Sneaker == Pigeon. With a 2Mbit upstream, it would take me over 4.5 hours to send 4GB, which means it's faster to take a thumb drive for most distances < 270mi (60mph * 4.5h), and certainly all distances <= 50mi.. at least for points coinciding with the surface of the earth.
The latency of Sneakernet sort of sucks though, and I wouldn't recommend it for anything other than the most casual
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"the fact that you can out-bandwidth [SOME] network connections"
A faster connection beats your sneakernet. The only meaningful comparisons are either state-of-the-art to state-of-the-art (fastest commercially available connection vs. as much high density storage as you can carry) or, far more interesting, equivalent cost transport media. Don't forget to factor in gasoline, wear and tear, insurance, cost of thumb drive, etc.
So that explains (Score:3, Funny)
the order for a large shipment of Ospreys, peregrines, and other raptors to South Africa.......
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Ospreys eat fish. Peregrines eat pigeons, yes, but they're not also testing sending the data via trout, so the Osprey wouldn't be that useful.
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You're one of those people who can't enjoy anything unless it's technically accurate, aren't you?
Stop having fun this instant! [tvtropes.org]
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Odd.....
I don't find you complaining about http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/09/08/29/1934251/Pigeon-Protocol-Finds-a-Practical-Purpose?art_pos=3 [slashdot.org]
Notice the last link in the article.
Yes, 99% of an Osprey's diet is fish. However, they have been known to kill and eat other birds as well. But attempting to explain a joke is most likely wasted effort.
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I would not even put it past that telecom company to hire some local hawk and eagle and vulture trainers, to be on the look out for that pigeon, and place a bounty on its head in the underground market
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MUTTLEY!!!!! DO SOMETHING!!!!
Doesn't mention their monopoly (Score:3, Informative)
South Africa's largest telecoms provider, Telkom (which has been taking flak for years for its shoddy and overpriced service)
It should be mentioned that they have a monopoly on landlines and that's why they're still the largest despite all the flak. 39% state owned, and ICASA(south africa's communications regulator) is practically telkoms bitch.
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They should have tested this on the Comrades Marathon 2009 (89km), giving one of the runners the memory stick, and see him/her finish before the 4GB download completes at the finish line.
Old News (Score:1)
This is really old news who cares?
Any kind of memory can get lost ever hear of RAID?
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We're talking about pigeons here, not bug spray [killsbugsdead.com].
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As someone else mentioned, it would be RAIP, not RAID
RAIP: Redundant Array of Independent Pigeons.
Contest ends (Score:1)
Telkom play fair? (Score:2)
Re:Telkom play fair? (Score:4, Informative)
RTFA: they had a trial (pigeon won), got in the news, quickly got a call from the telco's rep to get their circuit number so telco could make sure they had good service. Fair? Well not as long as telco is not giving them more bandwidth than they are supposed to have... in which case telco is just doing their job (which they are obviously not doing now). The best part of the article is the implicit suggestion to switch from ADSL to pigeons: the blogger claims they would save more than 80% cost compared to the existing line, or about USD 4600 per month savings.
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This is getting quite a lot of publicity and Telkom won't like the implications.
I suspect that they are already hatching (sorry) schemes of which Terry Thomas would be proud.
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Interesting choice of words there... considering that "resources" which could help them win would include two shells full of birdshot...
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Will Telkom play fair? Or will they throw resources at the problem to ensure they win?
If by "resources" you mean "peregrine falcons", I wouldn't be surprised.
Real time of sneaker net (Score:3, Insightful)
RTFA? ME? Do you know what site you're reading?
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Well the "get the data to the pigeon" is probably a moot point since you can release the pigeon from right next to the laptop where you will be sending the data from. Also you can start the send the moment you start uploading the data to a memory drive. 4gb should not take that long to load onto a newish flash disk...
And then the pigeon will probably land next to the laptop receiving the data.
And, come to think of it, who says the data via pigeon needs to be computer to computer? If a sysadmin receives it,
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The article is Slashdotted, but let's assume this is one working day's worth of logs, i.e. 8 hours. That's just under 300kB/s.
How fast was the ADSL line? Perhaps they could get a slower one, and stream the log data as it's produced.
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Not a fair competition... (Score:2, Funny)
Knowing Telkom, this is not a fair competition at all. The Pigeon have an unfair advantage of being faster, and not having the 3GB bandwidth cap that is (were 2 years ago) the norm on Telkom's ADSL accounts.
And I know I mentioned the information was 2 years old, but when talking about SA Telcom, that makes the it practically fully up to date
Get ready to be... (Score:4, Funny)
My money is on the pigeon (Score:4, Informative)
The show-down is set for tomorrow (Wed 9 Sep) so we even don't have to wait long for the final results!
Lunch... (Score:2)
The telco should have to deliver lunch as well. mmmm pidgeon.
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Re:Lunch... (Score:4, Funny)
Yes fried pigeon is quite yummy. Unfortunately since a serious bird flue outbreak a few years ago all over Mainland they tripled in price so we don't eat pigeon so often any more, maybe a few times a year, down from twice a month at least. They haven't come down in price really. You can still get them fresh in the market as well (the vendor will kill and pluck the pigeon for you). I live in Hong Kong, for the record.
And you have to remember to remove the SD cards from the pigeon before chucking it in the pan.
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Bandwidth? (Score:2)
This sort of thing reminds me of an exam question ohe of my CS professors once asked on an exam.
"Which is more efficient? (or has more bandwidth)
1. An 18-wheeler truck hauling a full load of hard drives (filled to capacity) traveling from New York to San Francisco at an average speed of 50 mph.
or
2. A T1 line transmitting the same data data.
(The necessary data was given as part of the exam question.)
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IIRC, Maersk Line did something similar, though they moved their US data centre to Denmark, but they loaded up a plane with hard drives instead of a truck.
They had to move the data between COB Friday, and be ready to run Monday morning in Denmark.
I can't remember if they succeeded.
Sustained or burst? (Score:2)
The truck is going to be more efficient in burst mode, but the T1 is going to be more efficient in sustained.
As to which is faster, then it is going to be the truck, on the condition you ignore the time to do the paper work, driver breaks, loading and unloading, so on and so forth.
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As to which is faster, then it is going to be the truck, on the condition you ignore the time to do the paper work, driver breaks, loading and unloading, so on and so forth.
As others have noted, the truck will be WAY faster, and could take an hour break every 5 minutes and still win hands down. Heck, a person with a small rig attached to a bicycle could beat the T1.
Re:Bandwidth? (Score:5, Funny)
No, but they were allowed to assume a spherical truck.
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Given the fact that this sort of question usually results in two trains colliding, I'd say no. :)
Otherwise, you'd have to add any number of considerations, such as how much of the road was under construction, whether the driver encountered bad chili at a truck stop that necessitated a lot more stops shortly thereafter, and how bumpy the road was (one good solid pothole and you can consider the need for a "resend" request for at least some of the data!)
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The answer to this was "an average speed of 50 mph" (in the exam question) which takes into account the road conditions.
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Does the phrase average speed not answer your question?
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He was also trying to make a point but, yes, everything was taken into account.
Re:Bandwidth? (Score:4, Interesting)
I doubt it. But assuming current technology, the 18 wheeler wins hands down easily. I'll use Seagate Barracuda 1TB drive as my baseline. Looking at it's size and weight, it turns out that the weight is the main limiting factor. Without special permits, a semi-tractor trailer is limited to 80,000 lbs gross weight. Assuming 50,000 lbs is actually usable for cargo, then at 1.371 lbs per drive, the truck can carry 36,500 drives. The volume that many drives is far less than the volume of a 28 ft trailer. So we're talking a single truck load of drives is about 36.5 petabytes.
Now how long would that take to transmit at T1 speeds? 1544000 bits per second = 193,000 bytes per second (yes, I'm ignoring any framing or overhead. Shame on me). Doing the math, I get a transmission time of almost 5993 years.
With that amount of time, I'll assume the truck can travel cross country in 3 days. But to be generous, I'll give it a week. I'll assume assume the handling time for the hard drives is the same at both ends. So in order for the truck to be faster, I have to handle 36,500 hard drives in a total time of less than 2996 years at each end. So I have a budgeted time of only 29.98 days per hard drive at each end.
Somehow, I suspect it would take a lot less time than that.......
Re:Bandwidth? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not relevant. The truck wins.
Let's make some conservative assumptions:
Time on the road is 166.667 hours or 20.833 days at 8 hours per day, which we'll round up to 21. Add a day each for loading and unloading and we're at 23 days.
In the same 23 days the T1 is busy for 3600 seconds an hour, 24 hours a day. That's a total of 1987200 seconds at 1.544 Mbps (202375 B/s), or 402159.6 million bytes, or just under 403 Gigabytes.
To beat the T1, the truck needs to carry 11 hard drives. They will fit comfortably on the passanger seat.
Each HDD will take 1.2 hours to download, plus 1 hour overhead for connecting and disconnecting. That's 24.2 hours total but the IT monkey only works 8 hours a day so it's going to take 4 days to transfer onto the servers (damn that 0.2 ...).
During those 4 extra days the T1 is still busy and gets another 69.94 Gigabytes. Looks like we'll actually have to pack _12_ drives into the truck for a total of 480 Gb, beating the T1's 473 Gb over the same period (27 days).
Less conservative assumption: using a 320Gb external USB drive and a motor cycle at 50mph (8 hours per day) you'll make the trip in 8 days, more than doubling the T1's bandwidth.
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"The truck driver is unionized" - anyone else read this thinking "why would you deionize a truck driver?" =)
Bandwidth note (Score:1)
here in the US (Score:3, Funny)
They should do it here in the US - dove season just opened in many states. Sure, you'll have a lot of packet loss, but the ones that make it thru will be going really really FAST
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They should do it here in the US - dove season just opened in many states
I really had no idea. I thought the US was full of hawks, not doves.
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Dick Dastardly and Muttley may foil that plan.
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They should do it here in the US - dove season just opened in many states. Sure, you'll have a lot of packet loss, but the ones that make it thru will be going really really FAST
So this is just the avian equivalent of UDP?
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Can you grill UDP packets after putting a slice of jalepeno pepper on it and wrapping in bacon? Because if so, then yes, the equivalent of UDP. Don't think UDP tastes as good though...
Never underestimate... (Score:1, Redundant)
RFC 1149 (Score:1)
Not practical (Score:2, Funny)
The carrier pigeon is not a practical replacement for a high speed link. For one the latency is quite high compared to DSL. Also it may be less secure since it is using a wireless solution.
Re:Not practical (Score:4, Funny)
So now you won't using ethereal to sniff packets. But a shotgun.
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So now you won't using ethereal to sniff packets. But a shotgun.
I'm guessing a rifle would be better. A shotgun would probably hit the storage as well.
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Latency is balanced with packet size. If you can send a single 16GB packet, it may be worth the additional latency, though a lost packet is bad and the delay until you know you need a resend could be counterproductive. Pigeons don't have monthly bandwidth caps - your capacity is constrained only by the amount of data you can fit into a lightweight package and waterproof it, and that combined with the latency relegates pigeons to high-capacity, low-priority data.
As far as security, you'd want to encrypt th
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Also it may be less secure since it is using a wireless solution.
Ah, but the packets peep when you peek, and peck if you poke!
HP's CPIP in the 80's (Score:4, Interesting)
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Our hearts go out to all the dead motorcycle couriers littering Highway 17.
They're not that bad (Score:5, Funny)
I've been a customer for years, and I haven't noticed any problems. (Oh, and first post BTW.)
The Pigeon Cannot Win... (Score:2, Insightful)
A new meaning to the expression.. (Score:2, Funny)
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I'd be more concerned about TTL...
Done that (Score:2)
The airplane won easily on total bandwidth, but the Doom2 ping times sucked.
Bb guns (Score:1)
My bet is on the telecom employee in the bush with the BB gun.
That's an awfully big datagram (Score:2)
I wonder what's the MTU of pigeons these days. With modern micro-SD cards, it's got to be north of 8 GB. I'm pretty sure that's bigger than IPv4 can accommodate.
Highest badwidth device (Score:2)
I lived there... (Score:1)
This is not a joke. If they are testing a typical DSL landline (which costs a person about $100/month), the pigeon will win.
BTW...Telkom charges you for the phone line, then an internet connection fee, and then you must purchase a "data bundle" which is all you are allowed to use before your internet is cut-off for the month. Most people stay around 1G or 2G of data. The 4G is
Never understimate (Score:1)
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway. -Andrew S. Tanenbaum
So... (Score:1)
Interplanetary network testbed!! (Score:2)
I just realized - IP over Avian Carriers [wikipedia.org] could be considered a conceptual precursor of Delay-Tolerant Networking [wikipedia.org] and the Interplanetary Internet [wikipedia.org] (not to be confused with the Interplanetary Transport Network [wikipedia.org], which is a method for moving actual things around in the Solar System at minimum cost).
Using pigeons as the transport mechanism would be a pretty good real-world test of the method. Sure, the transport methodology and the tests themselves ould be simulated in the computer, but where's the fun in that?
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I can think of some older conceptual precursors. "Mail", for example. Also, "pony express" and "runner." That last one is pretty old. Games have been played by all those methods. "Runner" even involved early cryptography in the form of Caesar's Box.
In completely unrelated news... (Score:2)
When asked for a comment, a Telkom spokesperson said "We intend to prove that IPoAC [wikipedia.org] is prone to sudden and catastrophic packet loss due to unanticipated natural events."
Taking bets .... (Score:2)
Paying homage to Pratchett (Score:2)
Where the postal carriage was pitted against the semaphore tower.
And the semaphore company had /exactly/ the same "shoddy/overpriced" rep.
ADSL vs SDSL (Score:2)
I wonder what their upload speed is? If it is asynchronus, they won't be able to touch the bird.
A KelKom subsidiary... (Score:2)
...devoted to the development of trained Hawks/Owls to take out the competition.
"In another IT development, local businesses are suffering data transmission losses at an unprecedented rate. One local health official (who asked to remain unidentified) attributed the losses to an increase in Avian Influenza in the region..."
Is anybody surprised (Score:2)