Pigeon Found to be Faster Than Broadband
What's next? BirdTorrent?
Carrier pigeons are an ancient way to transmit information. As we've seen in many movies, one would tie a small scrolled message to the leg of a pigeon before sending it flapping off to warn its recipient of impending danger.
Today we have much more modern and efficient ways to transmit information… or do we? If you're an internet user in South Africa on the Telkom ISP, you might have better results with the old ways.
A worker at a Durban IT company was very unhappy with the performance of Telkom's ADSL speed. As a result, he decided to pit a carrier pigeon armed with a 4 GB USB stick against a plain file transfer.
Winston the pigeon won.
By the time Winston reached his destination, only 4 percent of the file had transferred. The BBC report does not specify the full size of the file, but did say that Winston completed his journey in 1 hour and 8 minutes, while the internet transfer required an additional hour to complete.
ISP Telom said that it couldn't be held responsible for the slow transfer speeds to the IT company, as it has helped to advise the company in possible improvements, but thus far none have been accepted.
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LOL, only in SA hey, going there in Nov for 3 weeks so will be checking on the state of play personally, but then dont think I will be able to break away from the waves to test internet speeds lol
Did he include time to transfer file to and from USB stick or just a plain flying time?
I live in SA. Telkom provide the majority of broadband in the country. The fastest line they provide for commercial use is a 4Mbps line. That is the max transfer rate provided and is a very optimistic estimate. Normally you are looking at maybe 200 to 300 kbps. As for them "advising" on improvements, dont hold your breath while you wait for an extra line to be installed.
Yes, Telkom sucks. No one in S.A. will contest this point. Ever.
I do, however, feel it only fair to point out that NeoTel, Telkom's only real competition, makes Telkom look like a beacon of progress and service.
There are many things most people are unaware of - Telkom is forced, by government mandate, to lay cables to "disadvantaged" areas at their OWN cost, all over the country. Bear in mind that these "disadvantaged" areas do not pay any form of phone bill, and more often than not end up stealing the cables.
Also, Telkom's customer support sucks. True. But it exists. NeoTel can not say the same thing. They still do not have coverage over large areas of Gauteng, never mind the whole S.A, and to make things worse - they use a lot of Telkom's infrastructure leased at cost. Telkom is still responsible for repairs on these lines, yet now, they get paid less for it? Yes, service delivery won't be affected by this at all...
What more motivating than to fix things that you are making LESS money out of, thanks to our lovable and effective government?
But hey, NeoTel helps support our Political amaBenzi Frenzy, and as long as our much-loved members of parliament each gets his very own Mercedes, proudly sponsored by the happy and contented tax-payer, who are we to complain about NeoTel when Telkom does so much less to keep the Gravy Train running?
Did he include time to transfer file to and from USB stick or just a plain flying time?
Including data tranfer times (saw a much better article on bbc)
I was also told yesterday, that they were doing it all wrong... See "RFC2549 - IP over Avian Carriers with Quality of Service" http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2549.html
Not a fair comparison. What if the pigeon was carrying 10 32Gb M2 flash cards? That would roughly equal 80Mbytes/sec on that trip. Can anyone's ISP do that?
An amusing story tho.