The big picture: One of the oldest forms of long-distance communication, pigeons can deliver messages hundreds of miles relatively quickly and accurately. An old informal test found they could beat internet speeds under certain conditions, but how do homing pigeons compare to modern fiber optic connections?
A recent test assumes that pigeons can transmit information faster than gigabit internet over relatively short distances. The process underscores the importance of distinguishing between speed and bandwidth.
In 2009 a carrier pigeon successfully carried A 4GB memory stick could transfer that amount of data the same distance 60 miles far faster than a South African ADSL service. The pigeon took two hours to reach its destination, while the internet transmission only transmitted four percent of the data.
Content creator Jeff Geerling released the results of a more rigorous interpretation of the experiment this week, confirming that pigeons could theoretically beat today’s fiber optic links by about 500 miles. Even if he didn’t compete against an actual gigabit transmission, the bill of his simulation still speaks for it.
First, Geerling found that a pigeon could transport three 1TB USB flash drives in a single trip, despite the package approaching the size limits of what the bird could comfortably carry. He then brought the drives with him on a flight from Saint Louis to Nova Scotia, simultaneously uploading 3TB of files between the two locations.
Copying the data from a laptop to the drives, flying to Nova Scotia, and copying it to a computer there took six hours and 53 minutes, while the gigabit transfer took 10 hours and 54 minutes. Since the plane was flying at about 550 mph and the average speed of a pigeon is about 80 mph, Geerling calculated that the jet could surpass a 3TB gigabit transmission within 5,000 miles, while the pigeon could do so within could do 500 miles.
However, bandwidth—the amount of information a network transmits at once—can be more important than sheer speed. Until larger flash drives come along, a pigeon won’t be able to move more than 3TB per trip. In the meantime, Geerling could have transported hard drives with far more data on the plane. He points out that Amazon supports its cloud infrastructure with trucks that haul petabytes of files for this reason.
Another caveat is that carrier pigeons can only fly between two fixed points, while internet connections and vehicles can take more complex routes. Nevertheless, the experiment shows that one of the oldest forms of information transmission is still practicable in some situations.