In most implementations of awk, random number sequences start are seeded with a constant value (not with the current time) unless you call srand() before calling rand() the first time. (So, as you saw when invoking awk once a second to just produce two random numbers without calling srand() you frequently end up with with the same pair of random numbers every time you call awk. Furthermore, calling srand() with no operand supplies the number of Seconds since the Epoch as an integer number of seconds as the seed value in all but one implementation of awk that I know of. So, if awk is invoked to generate two random numbers calling srand() but without sleeping between invocations of awk you may get the same pair of random numbers a few times until the time in seconds changes.

While it is true that the while(1) loop in the following awk script is an infinite loop, it will only go through that loop a few hundred times before the pipe to the shell fills up (putting awk to sleep for a while). And, yes, byteone and bytetwo are only defined in the while do loop, it was my assumption that whatever you want to do with those variables will be placed in that loop replacing the echo command.

Code:

	awk '
	BEGIN {	srand()
		while(1)
			printf("%d %d\n", 256 * rand(), 256 * rand())
	}' | while read byteone bytetwo
	do	echo "$byteone $bytetwo"
		sleep 1
	done

But, obviously, if a known number of pairs of random numbers are wanted, the while(1) can be changed to a while(cnt++<num) loop, or the shell's while read loop can break or exit when it is done instead of using sleep or just continuing to process the next pair of random numbers.