The news that everyone sent me today (thanks, everyone) is that a South African company called The Unlimited has managed to send data using a carrier pigeon faster than by using Telkom's (largest South African ISP) ADSL line.

While interesting, this is not the first attempt at sending digital data via carrier pigeons; in fact, this type of data transfer has been defined (albeit humorously) as IP over Avian Carriers (IPoAC). Here's a bit of background on the story.

IPoAC was described in RFC 1149 (RFC, or Request for Comments, is a document describing some part of the inner workings of the Internet. In short, it's a very technical FAQ for the entire Internet) by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF); it was written by D. Waitzman and released on April 1st, 1990. The basic idea behind the "protocol" is strapping some kind of data medium (such as a memory card) on a carrier pigeon's leg and sending it to a remote destination.

IPoAC was first "implemented" (meaning: they actually did it) by the Bergen Linux user group; they sent nine pigeons, each carrying a single ping over the destination of about three miles, but they received only four responses; quite a poor result.

Then, in 2004, a group of Israeli enthusiasts sent three homing pigeons to a destination about 100 kilometers away, with each carrying 20-22 memory cards. The total amount of data transfered was 4 GB, and it took the pigeons below 4 hours, on average, to transfer it.

Finally, yesterday the folks from The Unlimited sent a single 11-month-old pigeon, named Winston, from their offices near Pietermaritzburg to the coastal city of Durban with a data card strapped to his leg. The result? Two hours, six minutes and 57 seconds; by that time, only four percent of the same 4 GB was transfered over the Telkom line.

The lesson? The Internet lines may be getting faster, but the memory card capacity is getting bigger even faster. If you need your data to travel fast, use a carrier pigeon.