Can Winston the pigeon fly faster than you can send email?
Sep8Written by:
2009/09/08 04:51 PM 
A homing pigeon named Winston will fly from Howick (outside Pietermaritzburg) to Hillcrest (outside Durban) on Wednesday morning to prove that he is faster at transferring 4GB of data than a landline.
With the unholy level of broad band, well actual very little and expensive broad band, we have in South Africa, this might just be a no brainer for the pigeon.
Bandwidth being so expensive and so sparse, especially in rural South Africa, it is not surprisingly that older forms of moving data is still considered.
The web is already abuzz with overwhelming support for Winston who will make the all important flight with a memory card strapped to his leg. He even has his own Facebook page and regularly tweets on Twitter, where, for obvious reasons, he feels very much at home.
Very slow broadband
Now to those of you in the states this might seem like a mindless idea. But lets work this out.
I have a 384kb/s ADSL line. Which means that it has a top capacity of 384 kilobits per second. That's Download. For upload I can only send at a maximum of 128kb/s.
4GB works out to be 4,294,967,296 actual bytes. So lets work this out to see how long it will take me to send or retrieve a 4GB file.
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Convert to bits |
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34,359,738,368 |
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Divide by my ADSL Down speed |
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384,000 |
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How many bits per second |
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89,478 |
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Convert to bits per minute /60 |
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1,491 |
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Convert to bits per hour /60 |
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24.86 hrs |
This is assuming that I have full capacity all the time, no errors, no CRC, and no resending. Which is highly unlikely.
To send will take me a lot longer. It will take me 74.57 hours to send 4GB of Data.
Yeah, from Pietermaritzburg to Hillcrest, the pigeon will win.
I’m routing for the pigeon, are you?
Update:
The pigeon Won. The pigeon beat Telkom.
The Map of the flight path
View Pigeon Race in a larger map
For more information visit the official website.
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blog comments powered by 7 comment(s) so far...
Re: Can Winston the pigeon fly faster than you can send email?
I'm routing for Winston!
By Gordie Rogers on
2009/09/09 05:15 AM
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Re: Can Winston the pigeon fly faster than you can send email?
I'm routing for Winston.
By Gordie Rogers on
2009/09/09 05:16 AM
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Re: Can Winston the pigeon fly faster than you can send email?
Winston for the win! WFTW!
It wasn't even a real challenge after all: http://www.news24.com/Content/SciTech/News/1132/1bc8b09e39b043928317dc769d4196e4/09-09-2009-12-23/Pigeon_beats_Telkom
Oh the hell that's going to come (!) for Telkom :)
By Greg on
2009/09/09 02:50 PM
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Re: Can Winston the pigeon fly faster than you can send email?
Telkom beaten by a COUNTRY MILE is what I say!
By VOTED! on
2009/09/09 02:58 PM
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Re: Can Winston the pigeon fly faster than you can send email?
The Post Office is faster and cheaper than Telkom ADSL
http://donnedwards.openaccess.co.za/2009/09/post-office-faster-than-telkom-adsl.html
BTW your numbers are wrong. You forgot to convert to bits. It takes 73 hours to upload 4GB. Or two months, depending on your bandwidth cap.
By Donn Edwards on
2009/09/10 02:33 PM
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Re: Can Winston the pigeon fly faster than you can send email?
Eeeek. I did label "Convert to bits" Did not do the calculation. Nice catch
By Robert Bravery on
2009/09/10 03:22 PM
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Re: Can Winston the pigeon fly faster than you can send email?
I am patiently waiting for the opposition to arrive, had enough of cost and lack of service.
By Yvonne on
2009/09/12 03:14 PM
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