[ILUG] pigeon packets and a serious question...

[kevin lyda]

ok so there's an article in salon regarding the implementation of rfc 1149
(i think that's the number).  readable story so far.

but i was thinking about how it could be useful[0].  and i'm being serious.

i noticed they used icmp packets which makes sense.  tcp has a timeout,
and i think udp might as well[1].  and this is why http://www.linux.mars/
is never going to work under present conditions (ok, lack of
infrastructure at the moment causes problems as well).

so the solution to having a useful protocol over ip[2] ip is the same
as ip over avian carriers.

i remember reading a while back about work on an interplanetary network.
has anyone here read about it recently?

[0]  for the pigeon method itself it might be useful to use a low cost,
     pellet shapped storage device.  the computer would spit it out into
     a dish and then the pigeon would pick it up, fly to the receiving
     computer and drop it in another hole (and possibly receive some food
     as a reward).  routing could be handled by having different dishes
     on the sending computer that correspond to different receiving
     computers.
[1]  wait, udp probably doesn't.  tcp just has the timeout for acks.
[2]  interplanetary 

-- 
kevin at suberic.net          "nobody likes a monkey on their back.  i had
fork()'ed on 37058400      three.  they were cramping my style.  it was
meatspace place: work      time to get rid of them."
http://suberic.net/~kevin                --porter, "payback"