IP over Avian Carriers
Encyclopedia
Internet Protocol
The Internet Protocol is the principal communications protocol used for relaying datagrams across an internetwork using the Internet Protocol Suite...
(IP) traffic
Internet traffic
-Historical Internet Traffic Growth:Because of the distributed nature of the Internet, there is no single point of measurement for total Internet traffic...
by bird
Bird
Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...
s such as homing pigeon
Homing pigeon
The homing pigeon is a variety of domestic pigeon derived from the Rock Pigeon selectively bred to find its way home over extremely long distances. The wild rock pigeon has an innate homing ability, meaning that it will generally return to its own nest and its own mate...
s. IP over Avian Carriers was initially described in RFC 1149, a Request for Comments (RFC) issued by the Internet Engineering Task Force
Internet Engineering Task Force
The Internet Engineering Task Force develops and promotes Internet standards, cooperating closely with the W3C and ISO/IEC standards bodies and dealing in particular with standards of the TCP/IP and Internet protocol suite...
(IETF) written by D. Waitzman and released on 1 April 1990 (April Fools' Day
April Fools' Day
April Fools' Day is celebrated in different countries around the world on April 1 every year. Sometimes referred to as All Fools' Day, April 1 is not a national holiday, but is widely recognized and celebrated as a day when many people play all kinds of jokes and foolishness...
). It is one of several April Fools' Day RFC
April Fools' Day RFC
Almost every April Fools' Day since 1989, the Internet Engineering Task Force has published one or more humorous RFC documents, following in the path blazed by the June 1973 RFC 527 entitled ARPAWOCKY, which parodied Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem Jabberwocky...
s.
Waitzman described an improvement of his protocol in RFC 2549, IP over Avian Carriers with Quality of Service (1 April 1999). Later, in RFC 6214 released on 1 April 2011, and 13 years after the introduction of IPv6
IPv6
Internet Protocol version 6 is a version of the Internet Protocol . It is designed to succeed the Internet Protocol version 4...
, Carpenter and Hinden published Adaptation of RFC 1149 for IPv6.
IPoAC has been successfully implemented, but for only nine packets of data, with a packet loss
Packet loss
Packet loss occurs when one or more packets of data travelling across a computer network fail to reach their destination. Packet loss is distinguished as one of the three main error types encountered in digital communications; the other two being bit error and spurious packets caused due to noise.-...
ratio of 55% (due to user error), and a response time ranging from 3000 seconds (~54 minutes) to over 6000 seconds (~1.77 hours). Thus, this technology suffers from poor latency
Latency (engineering)
Latency is a measure of time delay experienced in a system, the precise definition of which depends on the system and the time being measured. Latencies may have different meaning in different contexts.-Packet-switched networks:...
. Nevertheless, for large transfers, avian carriers are capable of high average throughput when carrying flash memory devices. Also, during the last 20 years, the information density of storage media and thus the bandwidth of an Avian Carrier has increased 3 times faster than the bandwidth of the Internet.
Real-life implementation
On 28 April 2001, IPoAC was actually implemented by the Bergen Linux user group. They sent nine packets over a distance of approximately five kilometers (three miles), each carried by an individual pigeon and containing one ping (ICMP Echo Request), and received four responses.
Script started on Sat Apr 28 11:24:09 2001
vegard@gyversalen:~$ /sbin/ifconfig tun0
tun0 Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol
inet addr:10.0.3.2 P-t-P:10.0.3.1 Mask:255.255.255.255
UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:150 Metric:1
RX packets:1 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:2 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0
RX bytes:88 (88.0 b) TX bytes:168 (168.0 b)
vegard@gyversalen:~$ ping -c 9 -i 900 10.0.3.1
PING 10.0.3.1 (10.0.3.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=6165731.1 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=255 time=3211900.8 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=5124922.8 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=6388671.9 ms
--- 10.0.3.1 ping statistics ---
9 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 55% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 3211900.8/5222806.6/6388671.9 ms
vegard@gyversalen:~$ exit
Script done on Sat Apr 28 14:14:28 2001
Other avian data transfer methods
Rafting photographers already use pigeons as a sneakernetSneakernet
Sneakernet is an informal term describing the transfer of electronic information, especially computer files, by physically couriering removable media such as magnetic tape, floppy disks, compact discs, USB flash drives, or external hard drives from one computer to another. This is usually in lieu...
to transport digital photos on flash media from the camera to the tour operator. Over a 30-mile distance, a single pigeon may be able to carry tens of gigabytes of data in around an hour, which on an average bandwidth
Bandwidth (computing)
In computer networking and computer science, bandwidth, network bandwidth, data bandwidth, or digital bandwidth is a measure of available or consumed data communication resources expressed in bits/second or multiples of it .Note that in textbooks on wireless communications, modem data transmission,...
basis compares very favorably to current ADSL standards, even when accounting for lost drives.
Inspired by RFC 2549, on 9 September 2009, the marketing team of The Unlimited, a regional company in South Africa, decided to host a tongue-in-cheek "Pigeon Race" between their pet pigeon "Winston" and local telecom company Telkom SA. The race is to send 4 gigabytes of data from Howick
Howick, KwaZulu-Natal
Howick is a town located in the uMgungundlovu District of KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa. The town is 1050 m above sea level, and about 88 kilometres from the port city of Durban. It enjoys warm summers and cool dry winters. A snappy chill descends upon Howick when snow falls on the nearby...
to Hillcrest
Hillcrest, KwaZulu-Natal
Hillcrest is a settlement within eThekwini in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa and forms a part of the Upper Highway Area.-History:Hillcrest was formerly a sleepy village, governed by its own Town Board on the outskirts of Durban that has now become a booming suburb incorporated into the eThekwini...
, approximately 60 km apart. The pigeon carrying a microSD
Secure Digital card
Secure Digital is a non-volatile memory card format developed by the SD Card Association for use in portable devices. The SD technology is used by more than 400 brands across dozens of product categories and more than 8,000 models, and is considered the de-facto industry standard.Secure Digital...
card (an avian variant of a sneakernet
Sneakernet
Sneakernet is an informal term describing the transfer of electronic information, especially computer files, by physically couriering removable media such as magnetic tape, floppy disks, compact discs, USB flash drives, or external hard drives from one computer to another. This is usually in lieu...
), versus a Telkom ADSL line. Winston beat the data transfer over Telkom's ADSL line, with a total time of two hours, six minutes and 57 seconds from uploading data on the microSD card to completion of download from card. At the time of Winston's victory, the ADSL transfer was just under 4% complete.
A similar "Pigeon Race" was conducted by Michelle Brumfield in rural Yorkshire, England: delivering a five-minute video to a BBC correspondent 75 miles away in Skegness. She pitted the pigeon (again carrying a memory card) against an upload to YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
via British Telecom broadband; the pigeon arrived in about ninety minutes while the upload was still incomplete: having failed once in the interim.
In September 2010, ISP Timico
Timico
Timico is an independent internet service provider in the United Kingdom, supplying a range of business IP and communications solutions.Timico gained a top 10 place in The Sunday Times Tech Track Fastest Growing Companies list , and in 2009 were ranked 7th in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50...
UK pitted a few homing pigeons against a rural broadband connection to see which was faster. Each pigeon carried a microSD card with 200MB of HD video data, while simultaneously a typical Internet connection was used to upload the same video data to YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
. This was done as a publicity stunt to raise awareness of poor Internet speeds experienced by many rural users.
These kinds of simple bulk transport do not use the Internet Protocol.
See also
- Semaphore Flag Signaling SystemSemaphore Flag Signaling SystemIn computer networking, Semaphore Flag Signaling System is a humorous proposal to carry Internet Protocol traffic by semaphores. Semaphore Flag Signaling System was initially described in RFC 4824, an April 1 RFC issued by the Internet Engineering Task Force edited by J. Hofmueller, et al. and...
- Victorian InternetVictorian InternetThe Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-Line Pioneers is a 1998 book by Tom Standage. It is about the development and uses of the electric telegraph during the second half of the 19th Century and some of the similarities the telegraph shared...
- Ankh-Morpork City Watch#Communications
- Homing pigeonHoming pigeonThe homing pigeon is a variety of domestic pigeon derived from the Rock Pigeon selectively bred to find its way home over extremely long distances. The wild rock pigeon has an innate homing ability, meaning that it will generally return to its own nest and its own mate...
- April Fools' Day RFCApril Fools' Day RFCAlmost every April Fools' Day since 1989, the Internet Engineering Task Force has published one or more humorous RFC documents, following in the path blazed by the June 1973 RFC 527 entitled ARPAWOCKY, which parodied Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem Jabberwocky...
External links
- "Carrier Pigeons Bringing Contraband into Prisons", Bruce SchneierBruce SchneierBruce Schneier is an American cryptographer, computer security specialist, and writer. He is the author of several books on general security topics, computer security and cryptography, and is the founder and chief technology officer of BT Managed Security Solutions, formerly Counterpane Internet...
, www.schneier.com (blog), June 27, 2008 - Pigeon-powered Internet takes flight, Stephen Shankland, CNET News, May 4, 2001
- "Winston the homing pigeon draws tweets of support", The Mail and Guardian, September 10, 2009
- "The Unlimited"
- http://www.mg.co.za/article/2009-09-10-pigeon-carries-data-bundles-faster-than-telkom