3 ms·

Has network latency improved much since this article's date? Bandwidth definitely, but latency?

yardstick 4y ago
Yes. Most people back in 2001 were not using fibre. Dial-up, DSL, etc are all much higher latency. In Dial-up you are easily talking at least 100ms slower, if not a lot more.
- mmh0000 4y ago
  Ah. How I would have killed for a 100ms ping back in my 56k modem days. My average ping on any Quake2 server was 250-300ms. It’s amazing how times change, now I get annoyed when my ping is higher than 30ms.
  - b112 4y ago
    It’s amazing how times change, now I get annoyed when my ping is higher than 30ms. That's because 2sec of ping is used to request 124 fonts, each using one char.
  - scaramanga 4y ago
    man, from my memory, if you were getting 250, you were incredibly lucky and probably lived close to the exchange :) 300-350 was more the norm for where i was.
acdha 4y ago
Yes: dialup modem latency was on the order of 100-250ms, DSL 10-70ms, and cable modems 5-40ms. Sitting on my couch using Wi-Fi over cable, I have 18ms to Google.com – call it a full order of magnitude better than a disk up user despite Wi-Fi adding 7ms.
the__alchemist 4y ago
You bet. Mangonel micro, archer kiting, cavalry bluff charges, deer pushing etc are all things you regularly see today that wouldn't have been feasible in the old versions. (in online play)
toast0 4y ago
Last mile latency has been reduced a lot as people moved to broadband, but also on longer distance routing where there are more paths from A to B than twenty years ago, and some of them are physically shorter. Higher bandwidth interconnects also mean less time in transit; it's not a lot, but it is some. Also, some early broadband networks backhauled too much traffic to central locations. I recall commonly seeing traceroutes from my home in orange county, ca going to kansas, and then coming back to servers in los angeles. I still see some traffic that leaves my metro area only to come back, but it's less frequent, and it's usually only going one or two states instead of halfway across the country.

Yes. Most people back in 2001 were not using fibre. Dial-up, DSL, etc are all much higher latency. In Dial-up you are easily talking at least 100ms slower, if not a lot more.

mmh0000 4y ago
Ah. How I would have killed for a 100ms ping back in my 56k modem days. My average ping on any Quake2 server was 250-300ms. It’s amazing how times change, now I get annoyed when my ping is higher than 30ms.
- b112 4y ago
  It’s amazing how times change, now I get annoyed when my ping is higher than 30ms. That's because 2sec of ping is used to request 124 fonts, each using one char.
- scaramanga 4y ago
  man, from my memory, if you were getting 250, you were incredibly lucky and probably lived close to the exchange :) 300-350 was more the norm for where i was.

acdha 4y ago

Yes: dialup modem latency was on the order of 100-250ms, DSL 10-70ms, and cable modems 5-40ms. Sitting on my couch using Wi-Fi over cable, I have 18ms to Google.com – call it a full order of magnitude better than a disk up user despite Wi-Fi adding 7ms.

the__alchemist 4y ago

You bet. Mangonel micro, archer kiting, cavalry bluff charges, deer pushing etc are all things you regularly see today that wouldn't have been feasible in the old versions. (in online play)

toast0 4y ago

Last mile latency has been reduced a lot as people moved to broadband, but also on longer distance routing where there are more paths from A to B than twenty years ago, and some of them are physically shorter. Higher bandwidth interconnects also mean less time in transit; it's not a lot, but it is some. Also, some early broadband networks backhauled too much traffic to central locations. I recall commonly seeing traceroutes from my home in orange county, ca going to kansas, and then coming back to servers in los angeles. I still see some traffic that leaves my metro area only to come back, but it's less frequent, and it's usually only going one or two states instead of halfway across the country.