Strange to think that the fastest speed in the universe is now a limitation to internet 'speed'? ... but that's not the entire reality - and the article misses the point (deliberately?) Let's do a simple calculation: A packet of data in transmitted from a data centre in New York (A), to a browser in Nairobi (B) - a direct point-to-point distance of 11,833 kilometers. Let's add a generous 50% because cables are not in a direct line - 17,750km. Now the speed of light in a vacuum is 299,792,458 meters per second - but typically in a fibre optic cable is *much* slower, at about 200,000,000 m/s Our data packet will therefore take about 89 milliseconds to travel from A to B. ...But we know that in reality, it's more like 250ms on a good day ;) - because the delays processing our packet through routers along the route add significantly to the time our packet takes to travel - much of this being added at the endpoints' 'last mile'. so, TL;DR, to increase our internet speed, we need to *reduce* the delays introduced by routers etc. between our two points. In general, it also helps to get sources and destinations as close together as possible - which is already being done by content delivery networks such as cloudflare, cloudfront, akamai, etc. - and indeed by improving our local networks, and getting local content hosted locally! I have always maintained that websites should be hosted close to their intended audience, and not wherever it may be convenient to the website owner. Cheers, Tony On 13/09/2016, Barrack Otieno via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:
Listers,
Might be a usefull read to some.
Regards
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Nick Ashton-Hart <nashton@consensus.pro> Date: Tue, 6 Sep 2016 18:11:01 +0200 Subject: [Internet Policy] Submarine cables explained - and what increased cable capacity means to end users To: internetpolicy <internetpolicy@elists.isoc.org>
Dear all,
I came across the below excellent post on submarine cables on TeleGeography and thought I’d share it. It is entitled "Are All These New Undersea Cables Really Giving Us Faster Internet? Not Exactly.”
http://blog.telegeography.com/why-everything-you-thought-you-knew-about-inte... <http://blog.telegeography.com/why-everything-you-thought-you-knew-about-internet-speed-is-wrong>
Regards, Nick
-- Barrack O. Otieno +254721325277 +254733206359 Skype: barrack.otieno PGP ID: 0x2611D86A
-- Tony White