KinnerNet, co-founded by former ICQ chairman Yossi Vardi, is an Israeli geek camp-out modeled after Tim O’Reilly’s amazing Foo Camp. At the recent KinnerNet 2005, Vardi and his pals Shimon Schocken and Ami Ben-Basat demonstrated that snails can be faster at data delivery than both ADSL and pigeons, a method tested last year.
From the description on Ami’s blog (photo by Herbert Bishko):
The system called SNAP (SNAil-based data transfer Protocol), uses biological carriers, and, for the first time, taking advantages of the unique merits of the wheel for data transfer…
System architecture: the system is constructed of a back end – a carriage, Ben-Hur movie style, which is made of a yoke made of light Balsa, and outfitted with two huge wheels – 2 DVD wheels, 4.7 Giga each. The front end, to which the carriage is harnessed consist of a Giant snail (Achatina fulica), known also as Giant African Snail (Africans are known as the world fastest runners ). These giant snail are of the GastroPod family (G-pod. We will reserve this name for transfer of music, and the name: G-mail for transfer of emails by snails SMTP –snail mobile transfer protocol )
Packets transport: Data is transported in 2 packets in parallel, 4.7 Giga each packet.
Results: Calculations that were conducted after the experiment, explicitly proved that in spite of the relatively, very slow, speed of the biological carriers, the Snap system succeeded in transferring data faster than any other conventional technologies, existing today.
Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)