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One printed IP/ICMP "ping" packet sent by carrier pigeon per RFC 1149 is up for auction at Christie's. The small scroll of paper, 41 x 210 mm, shows rolling creases from when attached to a pigeon's leg. It is inscribed and signed on the verso of backing board: "Property of David Waitzman".
In 1990, American network engineer David Waitzman authored RFC 1149 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.
On 28 April 2001, members of the Bergen Linux User Group in Norway carried out a full-scale implementation. 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. It was presented to Waitzman the following year. 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 of the early Internet community.
Source: Hacker News · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing