3 ms·
More bandwidth! Also depending on frequency, you might be able to use the EM spectrum more efficiently (e.g., multiple narrow wavelength lasers).
by charlescarver 4y ago
More bandwidth! Also depending on frequency, you might be able to use the EM spectrum more efficiently (e.g., multiple narrow wavelength lasers).
- klabb3 4y agoPeople focus too much on bandwidth, but latency is more important. Bandwidth has increased exponentially, but the speed of light has stayed the same for more than 10 years now.
- hulitu 4y ago> but the speed of light has stayed the same for more than 10 years now. Don't worry, i bet that in the next time we will read on HN about revolutionary methods to increase the speed of light, just like those articles about fusion, charging or batteries. /s
- greenbit 4y agoThe news about the breakthrough in FTL will reach Andromeda long before that patent clerk's quaint musings about bendy space ever will.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> the speed of light has stayed the same for more than 10 years now Little practical communication is constrained by the speed of light.
- greenbit 4y agoIt's usually stated in meters per second, a somewhat dry, cognitively inaccessible number. Try flipping it around though .. 3.336 microseconds per kilometer People, software engineering types anyway, have a feel for what a microsecond is; a CPU can get a quite noticeable amount of work done in a microsecond - and it takes three and a third of those just to reach the coffee shop on the corner! Jump across a continent, and now you're talking latencies on par with early 1980s disk systems. That being said, there's not too much you can do about the latency, 3E8 is the law, so we may as well fiddle with bandwidth.
- ztetranz 4y agoSort of related. "We can't send email more than 500 miles" https://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles https://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles