3 ms·
It's faster and more direct to go earth->satellite->earth for certain routes/types of data, than traversing through various routers and undersea cables. Roughl
by matznerd 12y ago
It's faster and more direct to go earth->satellite->earth for certain routes/types of data, than traversing through various routers and undersea cables.
Roughly paraphrased quote from Elon Musk SpaceX Seattle Office Opening: "The speed of light in vacuum is 40-50% faster than in fiber. So you can do long distance communication through space(vacuum), a lot better than if you route it through fiber and use far fewer hops. Lets say you want to communicate from Seattle to South Africa, the path is extremely convoluted, follows outline of continent, goes through 200 routers and repeaters, if done with satellite network, it can be done in 4 hops"
Video link to time of quote -> https://youtu.be/AHeZHyOnsm4?t=209 https://youtu.be/AHeZHyOnsm4?t=209