Originally Posted by
Gargleblaster
I need to shift a few hard disks, only weighing perhaps 20 kilos total, as fast as possible from a data center in east - central London to downtown Frankfurt.
Transferring electronically is too slow due to the amount of data.
PA-34 might be suitable for this, should be able to cover the distance in less than 2hrs.
For sure worth asking real carriers - if you wave the kind of money you are talking about at them they may be able to help.
You need to consider the acceptable delivery failure rate, I doubt a PA-34 is going to get there every day in the year.
You could perhaps send more than one copy by diverse routes - of course there may not be time to make a copy:-) Even then I bet you can't do this for a few years or even one year without a delay of a few hours.
You could choose the airports for each trip based on the weather forecast but you don't wan't process surprises so you will need to practise each airport.
Do they really need to send all this data? Maybe some kind of diff would work instead?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diff Maybe you are trying to solve the wrong problem?
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.
–Andrew Tanenbaum, 1981
https://what-if.xkcd.com/31/
I'm pretty sure my copy of "Computer Networks" said "truck" but I have lost it now and so I can't check. One of the best technical books I ever encountered.