In 2009 when South African IT communication was essentially only permitted through a single entity, as a publicity stunt a small ISP did an implementation of this:
As I recall at the time, the best consumer speeds available were 512kbps with a 3GB per month cap at today’s cost of about 45USD.
The worst part (especially as a WoW player) is that QoS was applied giving priority to ports 80, 443, 110 and 25. This resulted in all other ports having terrible latency, probably added 150ms on top of the unavoidable (due to speed of light) 190ms to get to European servers.
Fortunately today the situation is much better, there are numerous FNO companies and even more numerous ISPs for each.
I pay about 45 USD for an uncapped 100Mbps connection.
Back in the late 90s I delivered a couple of LTO drives and a bunch of tapes to a Customer in my car (not a station wagon, sadly). As I drove I thought "drive faster to decrease the latency!"
(The car was a Geo Metro and my co-workers described it as not much bigger than one of the backup tapes-- one of them likening it to some kind of interchangeable backup module itself.)
That's funny, but let's make it more plausible and less-sci-fish-ly satirical :)
Proposal: Using Trained Carrier Pigeons as Emergency Data Relays
Objective
Create a simple, low-tech way to move digital messages across a large area when internet, radio, and phone networks are completely blocked.
Core Idea
Pigeons carry small memory cards with the messages from one station to the next, like a chain of human couriers but using birds.
Steps to Set Up
1. Build small pigeon lofts (homes) at key locations across the area (e.g., every 50–100 km).
2. Train homing pigeons to fly reliably between each pair of nearby lofts (standard pigeon training methods).
3. At each loft, install a simple automatic device that:
- Reads data from a memory card the arriving pigeon carries
- Copies the data to a new memory card
- Attaches the new card to an outgoing pigeon
4. Attach a tiny, lightweight memory card (e.g., microSD in a small protective tube) to each pigeon’s leg.
5. People at the starting point load their digital messages (text, small files) onto the card and send the pigeon.
6. Pigeons fly to the next loft → data is copied → next pigeon flies onward → repeat until the final destination.
Basic Protocol Rules
- Each message gets a clear label (e.g., “To: City B, From: City A, Priority: High”).
- Stations check cards daily and send pigeons in both directions when possible.
- Use only trained, healthy pigeons; rest them between flights.
- Protect cards from water and impact with a small, sealed case.
Realistic Performance
- Speed: Hours to several days per hop, depending on distance and weather.
- Capacity: One 256 GB card can carry thousands of text messages or a few large files.
- Reliability: Works in no-power situations; depends on pigeon health and weather.
Damage Control
-Add cyanide to the chip in case the pigeon gets captured.
This is a proven concept (used in wars before radio) updated with modern tiny storage.
Semi-polished Response:
Oh, believe me, this very old but bored squishy human brain dreamed up the whole pigeon relay twist. Mr. AI just polished my prompt into coherent words since aging has an effect on people's ability to think clearly, especially in the "Information Superhighway." Sorry if it robbed you of that authentic chat vibe, that always-in-a-hurry young'uns seem to thrive on.
Unpolished Comment:
In other words, my comment was not levity. Learn to read the room, listen, close your mouth (e.g. flies may get in) and try to understand the deeper meaning in what others say or post before making an assumption.
More AI Polishing: (oh, I know you know)
In case you missed the point, "pigeon relay" is a historical messaging system where homing pigeons carried notes in stages across long distances.
Pigeons were raised at stations along a route. A message was attached to one bird and released; it flew home to the next station. There, the note was transferred to a fresh pigeon headed to the following station, and so on—like a relay race.
Genghis Khan used this to span Asia and Europe. It was fast, hard to intercept, and worked when other methods failed.
Another Unpolished Comment:
In other words, this could be a viable option to transfer information in places where regimes have instituted information blackouts that block all forms of modern electronic and digital communications, such as "Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea" and other places where crime is a daily occurrence, civil and human rights violations contine and remain unchecked or acknowledged by "Biased People" covertly embedded inside media outlets, especially the Western Media.
Extremely Unpolished Point of View:
Inexperienced and younger people--hint, hint--are usually the first to criticize points of view like mine because they have been taught to think or feel a certain way by listening to a single source of news or point of view. Since I have lived thousands, hundreds, er tens of decades, I have learned the game, thus I prefer to bypass all that crap, ignore TV, ignore most if not all media outlets, and use word of mouth (e.g. people, shortwave radio) to verify what's going on in the world.
Hopefully this should convince you that I am a cyborg and not an AI :)
> One major benefit to using Avian Carriers is that this is the only networking technology that earns frequent flyer miles, plus the Concorde and First classes of service earn 50% bonus miles per packet.
In 2009 when South African IT communication was essentially only permitted through a single entity, as a publicity stunt a small ISP did an implementation of this:
https://pigeonrace2009.co.za/
As I recall at the time, the best consumer speeds available were 512kbps with a 3GB per month cap at today’s cost of about 45USD.
The worst part (especially as a WoW player) is that QoS was applied giving priority to ports 80, 443, 110 and 25. This resulted in all other ports having terrible latency, probably added 150ms on top of the unavoidable (due to speed of light) 190ms to get to European servers.
Fortunately today the situation is much better, there are numerous FNO companies and even more numerous ISPs for each.
I pay about 45 USD for an uncapped 100Mbps connection.
It's an interesting form of spam how theres a link for an online gambling site just inline in the text.
> Carriers in the queue too long may leave log entries
> Avian Carriers MAY eat the NATs.
There's always something I've not spotted / forgotten before with these
Reminds me of that AWS hard drive truck thing where your data is sent with quite the latency
Echoing Andrew Tanenbaum's famous quip, Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.
Back in the late 90s I delivered a couple of LTO drives and a bunch of tapes to a Customer in my car (not a station wagon, sadly). As I drove I thought "drive faster to decrease the latency!"
(The car was a Geo Metro and my co-workers described it as not much bigger than one of the backup tapes-- one of them likening it to some kind of interchangeable backup module itself.)
It’s a great way to demonstrate the difference between bandwidth and latency.
Alas, Snowmobile has been retired:
<https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/17/amazon_snowmobile_del...> (2024).
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet
Horse heads have also been used historically to send messages of a certain nature.
With guaranteed receipt. Or at least, they cannot be refused.
That's funny, but let's make it more plausible and less-sci-fish-ly satirical :)
Proposal: Using Trained Carrier Pigeons as Emergency Data Relays
Objective Create a simple, low-tech way to move digital messages across a large area when internet, radio, and phone networks are completely blocked.
Core Idea Pigeons carry small memory cards with the messages from one station to the next, like a chain of human couriers but using birds.
Steps to Set Up
1. Build small pigeon lofts (homes) at key locations across the area (e.g., every 50–100 km). 2. Train homing pigeons to fly reliably between each pair of nearby lofts (standard pigeon training methods). 3. At each loft, install a simple automatic device that: - Reads data from a memory card the arriving pigeon carries - Copies the data to a new memory card - Attaches the new card to an outgoing pigeon 4. Attach a tiny, lightweight memory card (e.g., microSD in a small protective tube) to each pigeon’s leg. 5. People at the starting point load their digital messages (text, small files) onto the card and send the pigeon. 6. Pigeons fly to the next loft → data is copied → next pigeon flies onward → repeat until the final destination.
Basic Protocol Rules - Each message gets a clear label (e.g., “To: City B, From: City A, Priority: High”). - Stations check cards daily and send pigeons in both directions when possible. - Use only trained, healthy pigeons; rest them between flights. - Protect cards from water and impact with a small, sealed case.
Realistic Performance - Speed: Hours to several days per hop, depending on distance and weather. - Capacity: One 256 GB card can carry thousands of text messages or a few large files. - Reliability: Works in no-power situations; depends on pigeon health and weather.
Damage Control -Add cyanide to the chip in case the pigeon gets captured.
This is a proven concept (used in wars before radio) updated with modern tiny storage.
AI Agents can be fun, at times :)
It would've been more fun to do this via a conversation with a real human
Semi-polished Response: Oh, believe me, this very old but bored squishy human brain dreamed up the whole pigeon relay twist. Mr. AI just polished my prompt into coherent words since aging has an effect on people's ability to think clearly, especially in the "Information Superhighway." Sorry if it robbed you of that authentic chat vibe, that always-in-a-hurry young'uns seem to thrive on.
Unpolished Comment: In other words, my comment was not levity. Learn to read the room, listen, close your mouth (e.g. flies may get in) and try to understand the deeper meaning in what others say or post before making an assumption.
More AI Polishing: (oh, I know you know) In case you missed the point, "pigeon relay" is a historical messaging system where homing pigeons carried notes in stages across long distances. Pigeons were raised at stations along a route. A message was attached to one bird and released; it flew home to the next station. There, the note was transferred to a fresh pigeon headed to the following station, and so on—like a relay race. Genghis Khan used this to span Asia and Europe. It was fast, hard to intercept, and worked when other methods failed.
Another Unpolished Comment: In other words, this could be a viable option to transfer information in places where regimes have instituted information blackouts that block all forms of modern electronic and digital communications, such as "Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea" and other places where crime is a daily occurrence, civil and human rights violations contine and remain unchecked or acknowledged by "Biased People" covertly embedded inside media outlets, especially the Western Media.
Extremely Unpolished Point of View: Inexperienced and younger people--hint, hint--are usually the first to criticize points of view like mine because they have been taught to think or feel a certain way by listening to a single source of news or point of view. Since I have lived thousands, hundreds, er tens of decades, I have learned the game, thus I prefer to bypass all that crap, ignore TV, ignore most if not all media outlets, and use word of mouth (e.g. people, shortwave radio) to verify what's going on in the world.
Hopefully this should convince you that I am a cyborg and not an AI :)
Sigh, my brain hurts :(
Bergen Linux User Group doing it: https://blug.linux.no/project/rfc1149/
> One major benefit to using Avian Carriers is that this is the only networking technology that earns frequent flyer miles, plus the Concorde and First classes of service earn 50% bonus miles per packet.
:D
Bird Internet?
Bird Internets aren't real.
Could be useful, if only birds were real.
Disappointed there still isn't a protocol for sending messages in a bottle.
The original IP over avian carriers RFC is literally ideal for sending IP packets in a bottle.
There ain't an RFC for morse code, either.
Naturally. That’s an ITU-R recommendation[1].
[1] https://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-M.1677-1-200910-I
Fun read from simpler times.
Send a raven to Pyongyang.
Objective unclear; we sent a writing desk instead thinking, surely Poe could still write on this...
or you can just like, email them. Their overseas news agencies have email addresses