Yes, a Pigeon is Faster for Data Transfer than Gigabit Fiber Internet::A decade ago, a pigeon with a 4 GB memory stick outran an ISP’s ADSL service. A 2023 rematch features a bird with 3 TB of flash drives vs gigabit internet.

  • Meldroc@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck full of flash drives. The latency’s most annoying though.

  • PM_ME_STEAM_KEYS@reddthat.com
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    1 year ago

    This reminds me of the age when the egregiousness of home Internet data overage charges in Canada reached their zenith, with some back of the napkin math, I realized it would be more cost effectuvd to buy and fill a solid state drive (which had only begun to come down in price) with stuff, ship it overnight international, and then destroy it after downloading its contents, than to hit the overage charge limit with my provider.

  • Bobert@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    “Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of magnetic tapes hurtling down the highway”

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Popular TechTuber Jeff Geerling has delivered an updated take on the old chestnut about the relative merits of pigeon-based vs internet data transfers.

    Spoiler alert: the pigeon with its high-capacity microSD cards won Geerling’s data transfer race by a significant margin.

    Famously, in 2009, a South African company compared the transfer speed of a pigeon carrying a 4 GB memory stick vs local ISP Telkom’s ADSL service.

    So, he donned a pigeon mask and jumped on a plane to carry 3 TB of files from his home in the US to the Canadian data center, which the internet transfer also targeted.

    To conclude, Geerling says he could have easily done better as PiJeff, stuffing his luggage with very high capacity drives, but wanted to stick to the common 3 TB across all alternatives.

    Hopefully, another decade later, we will all have broadband measured in petabits, and pigeons won’t have to endure having flash NAND devices strapped to their legs for our amusement (research).


    The original article contains 432 words, the summary contains 163 words. Saved 62%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • imgonnatrythis@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I was lucky enough to have 2Gb fiber introduced to my area recently - I have to say I rarely notice meaningful differences over my lowest tier cable connection. I pull 1400Mbs on router based tests, but routine endpoint speed tests are 300-700 range. Was 30 on prior connection. Can run more stuff all at once, but still get occasional streaming delays, 5min of low resolution streams, routine downloads are about the same. Now that Mullvad has dropped port forwarding, this pigeon system is sounding pretty attractive.

    • diablomnky666@lemmy.wtf
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, but what about those upload speeds? Most cable providers give large download bandwidth, but next to nothing on your upload speeds. Synchronous connections are always best!

  • Rescuer6394@feddit.nl
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    1 year ago

    did it count the time to load the data onto the hdd and unload it at the other side?

    how much time would it take to move 3tb onto a usb3 hdd?

  • idunnololz@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’m not the original author:

    Trebuchets are the most technologically advanced siege engines of all time, and are capable of hurling a 90kg stone over 300m using a counterweight.

    With this in mind, we can perform the following calculations:

    A 22TB WD Red Pro drive weighs 670g, with a maximum hurl weight of 90kg, trebuchet can hurl 134 drives at once, totalling 2,948 TB of data.

    The average speed of a trebuchet projectile is 54m/s and the average size of an American ‘block’ is 100m. Lets presume 3 blocks to get our full trebuchets use (fuck you catapults).

    It’ll take 5.5 seconds for the projectile to go from launch to dramatic landing, meaning a throughput of 536TB a second.

    Therefore, trebuchets are the best transfer method.