Pris gjorde at Jonas Sætre kutta ut lokalt breiband og gjekk over til satellitt. Han får selskap av fleire. Det kan føra til lågare prisar, trur mange.

[WAITZMAN, David and the BERGEN LINUX USER GROUP.] One printed IP/ICMP "ping" packet sent by carrier pigeon per RFC 1149. Small scroll of paper, 41 x 210 mm. Rolling creases visible from when attached to pigeon's leg. Framed. Inscribed and signed on the verso of backing board: " Property of David Waitzman ". A surviving packet from the first and most famous implementation of the Carrier Pigeon Internet Protocol. In 1990, the American network engineer David Waitzman authored RFC 1149, A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers , on April Fools' Day. It describes, in deadpan technical language, the transmission of Internet packets by carrier pigeon. Although written as a joke, RFC 1149 became one of the best-known pieces of Internet folklore and remains widely cited more than three decades later. On 28 April 2001, members of the Bergen Linux User Group in Norway (BLUG) carried out a full-scale implementation of the protocol. Using printers, scanners, and racing pigeons, they printed individual IP packets as hexadecimal strings, attached them to birds' legs, and transmitted them between two lofts separated by approximately three miles. Nine packets were dispatched and four successful replies were returned. The present scroll is one of those transmitted packets: a physical Internet datagram that actually traveled by carrier pigeon during the experiment. It was presented to Waitzman, the original author of RFC 1149, the following year. Appropriately, BLUG sent the packet in a physical frame just as IP packets are sent within coded frames. The RFC 1149 implementation has been described as a quintessential example of the Internet's tradition of the "artful hack," embodying the playfulness, technical ingenuity, and collaborative spirit that characterized the early Internet community.

Long-time Slashdot reader badger.foo writes: As some of you may remember, in 2001 RFC1149 (TCP/IP over carrier pigeon) was implemented. Now one of the packets preserved from that event is up for auction at Christies. Direct link to the auction (current bid: USD 2600) is here. This is a unique c...

© 2026 Peter N. M. Hansteen We implemented the Internet over carrier pigeon (RFC1149) in 2001. Twenty-five years later, o...

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Long-time Slashdot reader badger.foo writes: As some of you may remember, in 2001 RFC1149 (TCP/IP over carrier pigeon) was implemented. Now one of the packets preserved from that event is up for auction at Christies. Direct link to the auction (current bid: USD 2600) is here. This is a unique c...

Long-time Slashdot reader badger.foo writes: As some of you may remember, in 2001 RFC1149 (TCP/IP over carrier pigeon) was implemented. Now one of the packets preserved from that event is up for auction at Christies. Direct link to the auction (current bid: USD 2600) is here. This is a unique chance to own a piece of Internet history! Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader badger.foo writes: As some of you may remember, in 2001 RFC1149 (TCP/IP over carrier pigeon) was implemented. Now one of the packets preserved from that event is up for auction at Christies. Direct link to the auction (current bid: USD 2600) is here. This is a unique chance to own a piece of Internet history! Read more of this story at Slashdot.

– Vi implementerte Internett over brevdue (RFC1149) i 2001. 25 år senere kan en av pakkene fra eksperimentet bli din! skriver Peter N. M. Hansteen.

© 2026 Peter N. M. Hansteen We implemented the Internet over carrier pigeon (RFC1149) in 2001. Twenty-five years later, o...

© 2026 Peter N. M. Hansteen We implemented the Internet over carrier pigeon (RFC1149) in 2001. Twenty-five years later, o...

This memo describes an experimental method for the encapsulation of IP datagrams in avian carriers. This specification is primarily useful in Metropolitan Area Networks. This is an experimental, not...

© 2026 Peter N. M. Hansteen _We implemented the Internet over carrier pigeon (RFC1149) in 2001. Twenty-five years later, one of the packets from the experiment could be yours!_ In 1990, network engineer David Waitzman wrote _RFC1149_ , a formal draft standard for transmitting Internet traffic via carrier pigeon, as an April Fools' joke. The document quickly became a favorite within networking circles, as it was a superb example of how something could be described with technical precision while having virtually no practical utility. Nevertheless, a small group in Bergen picked up the idea in 2001 and implemented RFC1149. * * * **Note:** This piece is also available _without_ trackers but _classic_ formatting only _here_. * * * The practical test took place on April 28, 2001. A group of nerds, members of the local user group _Bergen (BSD and) Linux User Group_ , and a group of carrier pigeon enthusiasts, formed a unique collaboration. Vegard Engen, who had written the code actually implementing the protocol for the Linux kernel, used his laptop and a setup involving a printer, carrier pigeons, and a scanner—as described in RFC1149—to send a `ping` command to Peter Hansteen’s laptop. Hansteen’s laptop was positioned with similar equipment at a pigeon loft a couple of kilometers away, on the other side of Mount Løvstakken in Bergen. Only a few packets were transmitted (see the _ping log_), as several of the intended carriers (that is, carrier pigeons) flew off when the cage they were in was opened a bit too wide. The experiment, originally intended to generate publicity for Linux guru Alan Cox’s visit to Bergen, was extensively _documented_ on the user group’s project pages. In the days that followed, BLUG’s website traffic surged from a typical daily count of under one hundred to over two and a half million visits during the busiest 24-hour period, after various geek-oriented websites got wind of the story. Shortly thereafter, Vegard Engen attended the next _IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force)_ conference, where he gave a presentation on the experiment and received a _commemorative plaque_ for his efforts. Vegard also brought one of the packets from the experiment to the conference; it was duly handed over to David Waitzman via one of his colleagues. Later, Peter Hansteen wrote a _“25 years later”_ article (also _here_), with a more detailed account of the events and additional links to relevant material. The latest development is that the very packet from the experiment that we gave to David Waitzman, possibly the first network packet ever transmitted via carrier pigeon, is now up for _auction at Christie’s_ , with a starting bid of USD 1,000. At the time of writing, five days remain in the auction, and the highest bid stands at USD 2,600. This is a unique piece of Norwegian and Internet history, and we in the RFC1149 implementation team strongly hope the packet ends up in Norwegian hands, now that Waitzman has decided to sell it. You have just a few days to decide whether to become the owner of a unique artifact of Internet history. * * * Peter Hansteen works at Tieto Tech Consulting Norway, and is a long-time free and open source software enthusiast. He is best known to the outside world for writing _The Book of PF_ and for having been pinged via carrier pigeon. "_A unique piece of Internet history: A packet from the RFC1149 implementation is up for auction at Christie's!_ " is © 2026 Peter N. M. Hansteen (published 2026-10-08) You might also be interested in reading selected pieces via _That Grumpy BSD Guy: A Short Reading List_ (also _here_).