To be fair, network latency is both much higher and much more variable than hard disk latency, even if the bandwidth is higher. Design can change, but it's hard

To be fair, network latency is both much higher and much more variable than hard disk latency, even if the bandwidth is higher. Design can change, but it's hard to get away from needing enough local smarts and storage to make an interface feel snappy. Edit - To back up my otherwise unsupported assertion: --- ycombinator.com ping statistics --- 5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 4105ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 80.985/112.433/163.591/29.114 ms So a little over 100ms with significant variance for the open internet, results fairly typical. (Edited to add: I can't reproduce these results; later attempts give closer to 450ms, so this is biased in the network's favor.) Hard drives (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150014&bop=And&ActiveSearchResult=True&Order=RATING http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&#3..., for lack of a better source) have latency around 5 ms. You can solve bandwidth problems by buying more lines, but latency, once introduced by a slow network hop, can never be recouped by any amount of hardware.