[digitalradio] ZS pigeon 'faster than broadband'
BBC News SA pigeon 'faster than broadband' Broadband promised to unite the world with super-fast data delivery - but in South Africa it seems the web is still no faster than a humble pigeon. A Durban IT company pitted an 11-month-old bird armed with a 4GB memory stick against the ADSL service from the country's biggest web firm, Telkom. Winston the pigeon took two hours to carry the data 60 miles - in the same time the ADSL had sent 4% of the data. Telkom said it was not responsible for the firm's slow internet speeds. The idea for the race came when a member of staff at Unlimited IT complained about the speed of data transmission on ADSL. He said it would be faster by carrier pigeon. We renown ourselves on being innovative, so we decided to test that statement, Unlimited's Kevin Rolfe told the Beeld newspaper. 'No cats allowed' Winston took off from Unlimited IT's call centre in the town of Howick to deliver the memory stick to the firm's office in Durban. According to Winston's website there were strict rules in place to ensure he had no unfair advantage. They included no cats allowed and birdseed must not have any performance-enhancing seeds within. The firm said Winston took one hour and eight minutes to fly between the offices, and the data took another hour to upload on to their system. Mr Rolfe said the ADSL transmission of the same data size was about 4% complete in the same time. Hundreds of South Africans followed the race on social networking sites Facebook and Twitter. Winston is over the moon, Mr Rolfe said. He is happy to be back at the office and is now just chilling with his friends. Meanwhile Telkom said it could not be blamed for slow broadband services at the Durban-based company. Several recommendations have, in the past, been made to the customer but none of these have, to date, been accepted, Telkom's Troy Hector told South Africa's Sapa news agency in an e-mail. South Africa is one of the countries hoping to benefit from three new fibre optic cables being laid around the African continent to improve internet connections.
[digitalradio] ALE400 and 30M
I am not familiar with the US band plan , but want to set up on 30M with an ALE400 station and leave it parked there for awhile for testing. Any suggestions for a frequency? Propagation on 30M has bee good over the past while, judging by the results on WSPR John VE5MU/VE5EOC
RE: [digitalradio] ZS pigeon 'faster than broadband'
Hi Andy group This article is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.. Telkom is a parastatal organisation (so-called private enterprise of which the Government is the major shareholder) with a monopoly on telecommunications services (including all ADSL line provision) for the whole of South Africa. They also operate their own ISP division, subletting bandwidth to independent ISP companies. Telkom's service is so notoriously bad that a website called Hellkom (http://www.hellkom.co.za/ ) was established some time back to give vent to the public's frustrations with their ineptitude. Telkom offer 3 different ADSL speeds - 384, 512 and 4096. Costs range from R152 (about $20) per month for a 384 line, to R413 (about $53) for a 4096 line. This is before ISP costs, which run to about R59 ($7.60) per Gb of throughput. Most of us are capped to around 3Gb per month. This is the reality of broadband internet in a 3rd-world country. The real drawback with pigeons is that they stand a good chance of becoming someone's dinner before reaching their destination!! (There are an awful number of folk living below the breadline here!!) Thought you might appreciate some added info.. 73 de BARRY MURRELL ZS2EZ KF26ta - Port Elizabeth, South Africa Member: SARL - ARRL - PEARS EPC#0558 DMC#1690 OMC#010 DXCC(mixed)#41,146 DXCC(RTTY)#1,916 DXCC(phone)#34,990 DXCC 20m,15m WAS(RTTY)#538 WAZ(RTTY)#185 WAE-I(mixed)#72 WAZS(mixed)#214 AAA#1569 As ZR6DXB: VUCC(50MHz)#1,334 UKSMG WAE(Silver)#75 UKSMG AFRICA#22 WAC (Satellite) _ From: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:digitalra...@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of obrienaj Sent: 10 September 2009 02:03 PM To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Subject: [digitalradio] ZS pigeon 'faster than broadband' BBC News SA pigeon 'faster than broadband' Broadband promised to unite the world with super-fast data delivery - but in South Africa it seems the web is still no faster than a humble pigeon. A Durban IT company pitted an 11-month-old bird armed with a 4GB memory stick against the ADSL service from the country's biggest web firm, Telkom. Winston the pigeon took two hours to carry the data 60 miles - in the same time the ADSL had sent 4% of the data. Telkom said it was not responsible for the firm's slow internet speeds. The idea for the race came when a member of staff at Unlimited IT complained about the speed of data transmission on ADSL. He said it would be faster by carrier pigeon. We renown ourselves on being innovative, so we decided to test that statement, Unlimited's Kevin Rolfe told the Beeld newspaper. 'No cats allowed' Winston took off from Unlimited IT's call centre in the town of Howick to deliver the memory stick to the firm's office in Durban. According to Winston's website there were strict rules in place to ensure he had no unfair advantage. They included no cats allowed and birdseed must not have any performance-enhancing seeds within. The firm said Winston took one hour and eight minutes to fly between the offices, and the data took another hour to upload on to their system. Mr Rolfe said the ADSL transmission of the same data size was about 4% complete in the same time. Hundreds of South Africans followed the race on social networking sites Facebook and Twitter. Winston is over the moon, Mr Rolfe said. He is happy to be back at the office and is now just chilling with his friends. Meanwhile Telkom said it could not be blamed for slow broadband services at the Durban-based company. Several recommendations have, in the past, been made to the customer but none of these have, to date, been accepted, Telkom's Troy Hector told South Africa's Sapa news agency in an e-mail. South Africa is one of the countries hoping to benefit from three new fibre optic cables being laid around the African continent to improve internet connections.
RE: [digitalradio] ZS pigeon 'faster than broadband'
A Durban IT company pitted an 11-month-old bird armed with a 4GB memory stick against the ADSL service from the country's biggest web firm, Telkom. Winston the pigeon took two hours to carry the data 60 miles - in the same time the ADSL had sent 4% of the data. A related story I saw a few years ago compared a pony express rider carrying a saddlebag full of DVD's to a T1 line. The pony express rider blew away the T1 line in terms of bit rate. Rick Karlquist N6RK
Re: [digitalradio] ZS pigeon 'faster than broadband'
On Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:44:30 +0200, Barry Murrell ZS2EZ mailgro...@zs2ez.co.za said: The real drawback with pigeons is that they stand a good chance of becoming someone's dinner before reaching their destination!! This is why you need retransmissions [1], Barry :-) And if the pigeon physical layer is not robust enough, there are some very large herbivores native to the African continent that could be used to run what would probably be the very first real LFN [2]. (I'll go away now!) [1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1149 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2549 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_fat_network -- 73, Stelios, M0GLD.
[digitalradio] info cookie
Hi all how do I create a info cookie for the digital radio sked page?? any info would be apreciated. thank you Alex VE2AIU
[digitalradio] LOTW TP, ALE, and Hawaii .... the ultimate challenge
Some folks here may be well aware that I lack just Hawaii for the LOTW Triple Play award, Hawaii via a digital mode. I have worked several Hawaii stations via digital modes of late but none of them have been LOTW active. Today I see a Hawaii station NH7RS is interested in ALE and is LOTW active ( Last upload for NH7RS: 2009-07-31 19:50:04Z ). Readers of this email group may also be familiar with my lament that ALE is not as widely used as I think it should, and how ALE scanning and database building is the ultimate method for finding possible open paths to a needed entity. So, it seems to me that I can now combine my fruitless quest for Hawaii digital and my advocacy of ALE . If I can assist NH7RS get his station ALE active, my argument will be that linking with him should be a piece of cake. That is the challenge, I will let you know how we do. Andy K3UK
[digitalradio] Re: info cookie
--- In digitalradio@yahoogroups.com, ve2aiu alexm_1...@... wrote: Hi all how do I create a info cookie for the digital radio sked page?? any info would be apreciated. thank you Alex VE2AIU Bonjour Alex. You go to the website http://www.obriensweb.com/sked/ If you have no cookie at all, you will see You must be logged in to post in the bottom left corner of your screen. Click on that link and you will then see a page that says K3UK Sked Pages - Login Note: this form is common to all pages hosted here . Fill out the information requested, really only your call sign is REQUIRED but the other info is useful for people that may want to sked with you. Then click log in If you do this and still do not have a cookie, it is likely because your web browser is set to not allow cookies. If this is the case you need to set allow cookies. In Firefox you can do this via TOOLS/OPTIONS/PRIVACY then allow cookies from sites. In Internet Explorer TOOLS/Internet Options/Privacy , then play with the slider level until it says it allows cookies. If you have done all this and still do not get cookies allowed, let me know. Andy K3UK
[digitalradio] NZ4O Daily LF/MF/HF/6M Frequency Radiowave Propagation Forecast #2009-32
The NZ4O Daily LF/MF/HF/6M Frequency Radiowave Propagation Forecast #2009-32 has been published on Friday 09/11/2009 at UTC, valid UTC Saturday 09/12/2009 through 2359 UTC Friday 09/18/2009 at http://www.wcflunatall.com/nz4o3.htm . 73 GUD DX, Thomas F. Giella, NZ4O Lakeland, FL, USA n...@arrl.net NZ4O Daily Solar Space Weather Geomagnetic Data Archive: http://www.wcflunatall.com/nz4o1.htm NZ4O Daily LF/MF/HF/6M Frequency Radiowave Propagation Forecast Archive: http://www.wcflunatall.com/nz4o3.htm NZ4O 160 Meter Radio Propagation Theory Notes: http://www.wcflunatall.com/nz4o5.htm NZ4O Solar Space Weather Geomagnetic Data In Graphic Image Format: http://www.wcflunatall.com/nz4o2.htm NZ4O Solar Cycle 24 Forecast Discussion Archive: http://www.wcflunatall.com/nz4o4.htm NZ4O LF/MF/HF/VHF Frequency Radiowave Propagation Email Reflector: http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/spaceweather NZ4O Harmful Man Induced Climate Change (Global Warming) Refuted: http://www.wcflunatall.com/globalwarminglie.htm No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.409 / Virus Database: 270.13.88/2358 - Release Date: 09/09/09 21:36:00
