I'm going by memory here, but IIRC the fastest level of CPU cache (L1) can be accessed in about 2 nanoseconds. Even the slowest level (L3) operates on the order

I'm going by memory here, but IIRC the fastest level of CPU cache (L1) can be accessed in about 2 nanoseconds. Even the slowest level (L3) operates on the order of a few hundred nanoseconds. RAM is slow by comparison, and network latency is so much slower it's basically glacial.