[kictanet] Fwd: [Internet Policy] Submarine cables explained - and what increased cable capacity means to end users

[Tony White]

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 at lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:
> Listers,
>
> Might be a usefull read to some.
>
> Regards
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Nick Ashton-Hart <nashton at 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 at 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-internet-speed-is-wrong
> <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