In
computer network
A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are ...
ing, IP over Avian Carriers (IPoAC) is a joke proposal to carry
Internet Protocol
The Internet Protocol (IP) is the network layer communications protocol in the Internet protocol suite for relaying datagrams across network boundaries. Its routing function enables internetworking, and essentially establishes the Internet.
...
(IP)
traffic
Traffic comprises pedestrians, vehicles, ridden or herded animals, trains, and other conveyances that use public ways (roads) for travel and transportation.
Traffic laws govern and regulate traffic, while rules of the road include traffi ...
by
bird
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...
s such as
homing pigeons. IP over Avian Carriers was initially described in issued by the
Internet Engineering Task Force
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster or requirements and a ...
(IETF), written by D. Waitzman, and released on April 1, 1990. It is one of several
April Fools' Day Request for Comments.
Waitzman described an improvement of his protocol in , ''IP over Avian Carriers with Quality of Service'' (1 April 1999). Later, in —released on 1 April 2011, and 13 years after the introduction of
IPv6
Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. IPv ...
—
Brian Carpenter and Robert 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 occurs when one or more packets of data travelling across a computer network fail to reach their destination. Packet loss is either caused by errors in data transmission, typically across wireless networks, or network congestion.Kur ...
ratio of 55% (due to operator error), and a
response time
Response time may refer to:
*The time lag between an electronic input and the output signal which depends upon the value of passive components used.
* Responsiveness, how quickly an interactive system responds to user input
* Response time (biolog ...
ranging from to over . Thus, this technology suffers from high
latency.
Real-life implementation
On 28 April 2001, IPoAC was implemented by the
Bergen
Bergen (), historically Bjørgvin, is a city and municipality in Vestland county on the west coast of Norway. , its population is roughly 285,900. Bergen is the second-largest city in Norway. The municipality covers and is on the peninsula o ...
Linux user group, under the name CPIP (for Carrier Pigeon Internet Protocol). They sent nine
packet
Packet may refer to:
* A small container or pouch
** Packet (container), a small single use container
** Cigarette packet
** Sugar packet
* Network packet, a formatted unit of data carried by a packet-mode computer network
* Packet radio, a fo ...
s over a distance of approximately five kilometers (three miles), each carried by an individual pigeon and containing one ping (
ICMP Echo Request
ping is a computer network administration software utility used to test the reachability of a host on an Internet Protocol (IP) network. It is available for virtually all operating systems that have networking capability, including most embedd ...
), and received four responses.
Script started on Sat Apr 28 11:24:09 2001
$ /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)
$ 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
Script done on Sat Apr 28 14:14:28 2001
This real life implementation was mentioned by the French MP
Martine Billard in the French
Assemblée Nationale
The National Assembly (french: link=no, italics=set, Assemblée nationale; ) is the lower house of the bicameral French Parliament under the Fifth Republic, the upper house being the Senate (). The National Assembly's legislators are know ...
, during debates about
Hadopi
The French HADOPI law or Creation and Internet law (french: Haute Autorité pour la Diffusion des Œuvres et la Protection des droits d'auteur sur Internet, ; or, loosely in English, "Supreme Authority for the Distribution of Works and Protection o ...
.
The implementation was noted in the song "Paper Pings" by Steve Savitzky.
Risks
In December 2005, a Gartner report on bird flu that concluded "A pandemic wouldn't affect IT systems directly" was humorously criticized for neglecting to consider RFC 1149 and RFC 2549 in its analysis.
Known risks to the protocol include:
* Carriers being attacked by
birds of prey
Birds of prey or predatory birds, also known as raptors, are hypercarnivorous bird species that actively hunt and feed on other vertebrates (mainly mammals, reptiles and other smaller birds). In addition to speed and strength, these predat ...
. RFC2549: "Unintentional
encapsulation in hawks has been known to occur, with decapsulation being messy and the packets mangled."
* Carriers being blown off course. RFC1149: "While broadcasting is not specified,
storms
A storm is any disturbed state of the natural environment or the atmosphere of an astronomical body. It may be marked by significant disruptions to normal conditions such as strong wind, tornadoes, hail, thunder and lightning (a thunderstorm), ...
can cause data loss."
* The absence of viable local carriers. RFC6214: "In some locations, such as New Zealand, a significant proportion of carriers are only able to execute short
hops, and only at times when the background level of photon emission is extremely low." This describes the flightless and nocturnal nature of
kiwi
Kiwi most commonly refers to:
* Kiwi (bird), a flightless bird native to New Zealand
* Kiwi (nickname), a nickname for New Zealanders
* Kiwifruit, an edible berry
* Kiwi dollar or New Zealand dollar, a unit of currency
Kiwi or KIWI may also ref ...
s.
* Loss of availability of species, such as the extinction of the
passenger pigeon
The passenger pigeon or wild pigeon (''Ectopistes migratorius'') is an extinct species of pigeon that was endemic to North America. Its common name is derived from the French word ''passager'', meaning "passing by", due to the migratory habits ...
.
* Disease affecting the carriers. RFC6214: "There is a known risk of infection by the so-called
H5N1 virus
Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 (A/H5N1) is a subtype of the influenza A virus which can cause illness in humans and many other animal species. A bird-adapted strain of H5N1, called HPAI A(H5N1) for highly pathogenic avian influenza virus of type ...
."
* The network topologies supported for
multicast
In computer networking, multicast is group communication where data transmission is addressed to a group of destination computers simultaneously. Multicast can be one-to-many or many-to-many distribution. Multicast should not be confused with ...
communication are limited by the homing abilities of carriers. RFC6214: "...
arriersprove to have no talent for
multihoming
Multihoming is the practice of connecting a host or a computer network to more than one network. This can be done in order to increase reliability or performance.
A typical host or end-user network is connected to just one network. Connecting ...
, and in fact enter a
routing loop
A routing loop is a common problem with various types of networks, particularly computer networks. They are formed when an error occurs in the operation of the routing algorithm, and as a result, in a group of nodes, the path to a particular destin ...
whenever multihoming is attempted."
Other avian data transfer methods
Rafting photographers already use pigeons as a
sneakernet
Sneakernet, also called sneaker net, is an informal term for the transfer of electronic information by physically moving media such as magnetic tape, floppy disks, optical discs, USB flash drives or external hard drives between computers, rather ...
to transport digital photos on
flash media
Flash memory is an electronic non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for the NOR and NAND logic gates. Both use t ...
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 commonly refers to:
* Bandwidth (signal processing) or ''analog bandwidth'', ''frequency bandwidth'', or ''radio bandwidth'', a measure of the width of a frequency range
* Bandwidth (computing), the rate of data transfer, bit rate or thr ...
basis compares very favorably to current ADSL standards, even when accounting for lost drives.
On March 12, 2004,
Yossi Vardi
Joseph "Yossi" Vardi ( he, יוסי ורדי, born September 2, 1942) is an Israeli entrepreneur and investor. He is one of Israel's first high-tech entrepreneurs. For over 47 years he has founded and helped to build over 85 high-tech companies ...
, Ami Ben-Bassat, and Guy Vardi sent three homing pigeons a distance of , "each carrying 20–22 tiny memory cards containing 1.3 GB, amounting in total of 4 GB of data." An effective throughput of 2.27 Mbps was achieved. The purpose of the test was to measure and confirm an improvement over RFC 2549. Since the developers used flash memory instead of paper notes as specified by RFC 2549, the experiment was widely criticized as an example in which an optimized implementation breaks an official standard.
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
Telkom SA SOC Limited is a South African wireline and wireless telecommunications provider, operating in more than 38 countries across the African continent. Telkom is majority state-owned (55.3%) with the South African government owning 40. ...
. The race was to send 4 gigabytes of data from
Howick to
Hillcrest, approximately apart. The pigeon carried a
microSD card and competed against a Telkom
ADSL
Asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) is a type of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem can provide. ...
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.
In November 2009, the Australian comedy/current-affairs television program
Hungry Beast
''Hungry Beast'' (originally ''Projext NEXT'') was an Australian television comedy and current affairs program that was broadcast on ABC Television.
Format
The show was a half-hour program and is structured as a hybrid between a current affairs ...
repeated this experiment. The Hungry Beast team took up the challenge after a fiery parliament session wherein the government of the time blasted the opposition for not supporting telecommunications investments, saying that if the opposition had their way, Australians would be doing data transfer over carrier pigeons. The Hungry Beast team had read about the South African experiment and assumed that, as a developed western country, Australia would have higher speeds. The experiment had the team transfer a 700MB file via three delivery methods to determine which was the fastest: A carrier pigeon with a
microSD card, a car carrying a
USB Stick
A USB flash drive (also called a thumb drive) is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. It is typically removable, rewritable and much smaller than an optical disc. Most weigh less than . Since first ...
, and a
Telstra
Telstra Group Limited is an Australian telecommunications company that builds and operates telecommunications networks and markets voice, mobile, internet access, pay television and other products and services. It is a member of the S&P/ASX 20 ...
(Australia's largest telecom provider) ADSL line. The data was to be transferred from
Tarana
''Tarana'' is a type of composition in Hindustani classical vocal music in which certain words (e.g. "odani", "todani", "tadeem" and "yalali") based on Persian and Arabic phonemes are rendered at a medium (''madhya laya'') or fast (''drut laya'' ...
in rural
New South Wales
)
, nickname =
, image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates:
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = Australia
, established_title = Before federation
, es ...
to the western-
Sydney suburb of
Prospect, New South Wales
Prospect is a suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Prospect is located 32 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district in the local government area of the City of Blacktown and is part of the Greater Western S ...
, a distance of by road. Approximately halfway through the race, the internet connection unexpectedly dropped and the transfer had to be restarted. The pigeon won the race with a time of approximately 1 hour 5 minutes, the car came in second at 2 hours 10 minutes, while the internet transfer did not finish, having dropped out a second time and not coming back. The estimated time to upload completion at one point was as high as 9 hours, and at no point did the estimated upload time fall below 4 hours.
A similar pigeon race was conducted in September 2010 by tech blogger (trefor.net) and ISP Timico CTO Trefor Davies with farmer Michelle Brumfield in rural
Yorkshire, England
Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other English counties, functions have ...
: delivering a five-minute video to a
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
. The pigeon was pitted (carrying a memory card with a 300MB HD video of Davies having a haircut) against an upload to
broadband; the pigeon was released at 11:05 am and arrived in the loft one hour and fifteen minutes later while the upload was still incomplete, having failed once in the interim.