3 ms·
Network latency is limited by the speed of light.
by linkregister 7y ago
Network latency is limited by the speed of light.
- freehunter 7y agoYes but the speed of light is very fast. Light can travel nearly 200 miles in one millisecond.
- linkregister 7y agoPlease explain how 5G would overcome the obstacles to 1ms ping better than 4G. Higher bandwidth does not reduce latency for minuscule packets with low contention.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jsjohnst 7y agoCorrect, light travels at 186 miles per millisecond, but virtually nothing we have can actually transfer a single packet anywhere near light speed. Take two high end expensive network cards with fiber SFP+ connectors and connect them with just 1 meter of cable, and I very highly doubt you’ll get a ping time of under 0.1ms. And that’s just 1 meter! If speed of light was the limiting factor, that should be down in the nanosecond region.
- wmf 7y agoI hate to be that guy but I have done that test and the latency is under 30 us or 0.03 ms.
- jsjohnst 7y agoI meant to say 0.01ms :( (Hence why my later part of the comment references “nanosecond region”) Thanks for calling it out! Edit: To say my original post another way, about the fastest I’ve ever seen for a ping time is ten microseconds over a one meter fiber optic cable. That’s 3,000x slower than the speed of light. Fiber optic cable is far more efficient than a Point-To-Multipoint radio which is in a noisy environment (aka cellular), so to think you’ll get within 2 orders of magnitude using 5G vs the best fiber speeds I’ve seen seems crazy to me.