Written by: Beck

Good news for everyone worried about the eschaton: once WWIII sends us back to the stone age, we won't have to rely on Kevin Costner to deliver our mail for us, thanks to a team of Linux users (who else!) who conducted a successful test of Carrier Pigeon Internet Protocol. Yes, you read that correctly. What's more, the protocol has been around since 1990, before the real mainstreaming of the internet even began (i.e. before the development of Netscape). Why would people do such a thing? Funny you should ask...

Why bother with such a pokey protocol? "Because it could be done, and because no one had done it before," Engen said.

The best part of that article is the little info box showing comparative internet speeds, all the way from OC768 fibre optic cable (40 gigabits/sec)all the way down to pigeon (.08 bits/sec).