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In 1990, engineers wrote an internet standard for carrier pigeons

Ellsworth Toohey
Jul 08, 2026
∙ Paid

IP over Avian Carriers — Andreas Trepte / CC BY-SA 2.5 (via Wikipedia)

According to IP over Avian Carriers, the internet’s standards body once published a straight-faced proposal “to carry Internet Protocol (IP) traffic by birds such as homing pigeons.” RFC 1149, written by David Waitzman and released on April 1, 1990, was one of several April Fools’ Day…

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