At Lucid Rhino Web Design we are 100% committed to keeping our carbon footprint as low as possible.

Every website we host is already powered by 100% renewable energy*, but we wanted to go a step further. Many companies are turning to drones to deliver their services faster, and so are we. As of today, every website we host now fully supports the new ‘APRL’ (Avian Propelled Reasonable Latency) protocol for website requests across the UK. This enables faster page load times for internet users facing low bandwidth issues, e.g those in remote locations. This system essentially acts as an auxiliary CDN for hard to reach areas.

For those interested in the technical details, on an ongoing basis, every page of each website is cached once an hour as a standalone PWA (Progressive Web App) and stored on a bank of USB flash drives at several locations across the UK. When a visitor requests one of these web pages, an Arduino springs a simple robotic arm into action to unplug and attach the relevant USB drive to the ankle bracket of one of our free-range pigeons trained to hone in on the visitor’s area, as required. The Arduino then releases the pigeon from its spacious enclosure with a sprung hatch and the pigeon gets flapping. All that’s then left to complete the circuit is to notify the original user of the location they can expect to receive their requested website delivery, with a request to supply the pigeon with a bowl of water.

In our tests we found this new protocol can cut page load times down from 2 hours to 1 hour 52 seconds. Cutting out these eight seconds gives the websites we host an incredible competitive edge. I mean, who wants to wait an extra eight seconds for a web page to load? We are delighted by the results we’ve seen and we think you will be too.

This protocol is available to everyone using the Flock browser but several other browsers plan to support APRL soon.

* this bit is genuinely true. I mean the rest is true 😉 but this bit’s the truest.