Seen over at Slashdot:
“The results are in: it’s faster to send your data via an airborne carrier than it is through the pipes. As discussed Tuesday, a company in South Africa called Unlimited IT, frustrated by terribly slow Internet speeds, decided to prove their point by sending an actual homing pigeon with a “data card” strapped to its leg from one of their offices to another while at the same time uploading the same amount of data to the same destination via their ISPs data lines. The media outlet reporting this triumph said that it took the pigeon just over 1 hour to make the 80km/50mile flight, whereas it took over 2 hours to transfer just 4% of that data.”
Details on RFC 1149, for those who are not in the know.
stranger fruit 
Leaving ports open for RFC1149 transmissions can create security vulnerabilities, though:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/06/carrier_pigeons.html
That and crap all over your front yard.
You know of course that RFC 1149 transmissions can often cause corrupted data packets, and even deposits on your car. . .
This pigeon is not RFC1149 compliant as it isn’t carrying IP packets, and is entitled to be dropped by any actual RFC1149 compliant networks.
Pingback: Those that don’t know history… « The Renaissance Mathematicus