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DiscussionI sent a ping to a server in New Zealand from Lausanne, Switzerland (self.technology)

submitted by race_herens

The response time was 285 ms. This means that, in this case, information traveled around the world in 285 ms.

This is fascinating since a ray of light would make the same journey in roughly 150 ms. We live in a world where information travels at a speed that is higher than half the speed of light in vacuum! Romans would be jealous!

If the fiber refractive index is taken into account, a ray of light would need a little more than 200 ms to travel around the world. There are just a few tens of milliseconds left to process and guide information!

edit: New Zealand is the farthest location from Switzerland

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[–]ATLKimo 13 points14 points  (3 children)

How many hops were there?

[–]race_herens[S] 15 points16 points  (2 children)

traceroute listed 30

[–]Burninator05 13 points14 points  (1 child)

Did it actually make it there in 30? My experience is that 30 is the default max hop count. You might need to increase the maximum to see exactly how many it takes to get there.

[–]race_herens[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

I think it is correct. Yesterday 30 hops and today 31.

[–]the_cummer 13 points14 points  (3 children)

Spain is the farthest location from NZ ;)

[–]race_herens[S] 6 points7 points  (2 children)

So! Whats the ping with NZ? :D

[–]mikbob 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Just realised I'm on holiday in spain.

I'm getting 347ms over 16 hops. Although my ping to google.es is 48ms so the internet isn't great here.

[–]race_herens[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ahah indeed! My ping to google.ch is 15-17 ms only.

[–]locster 8 points9 points  (4 children)

Also note that fibre requires repeaters every 60-100km(*), which makes it even more impressive.

* Last I heard 100km was cutting edge, which would mean most installed fibre isn't as good as that.

[–]chiwawa_42 18 points19 points  (2 children)

You're almost right.

15 years ago the standard was set to 80km. Long haul fiber paths were built accross many countries with buildings every 80km to host signal regenerators (3R repeaters mostly, on SDH).

Nowadays, a 10Gbps modulated wavelenght can travel 400km without regen, using an EDFA as a line amplificator on the first hop and RaMAN as a pump on the last hop.

Using both EDFA and RaMAN, or a new device calles EDRA, you can reach up to 4000km with one of these implanted every 400 to 600km.

This doesn't work for 25 to 100Gbps lanes because receivers for these are way more sensitive to chromatic dispertion, and compensators tends to alter signal's structure along the way. 3R every 80-200km is still required for those.

[–]race_herens[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

400 km, really? Wow, I didn't know that! I knew about LASER amplification and spectroscopy, but I hadn't expected such a huge distance between them!

[–]locster 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Interesting. Is it true then that the repeaters are all powered by a single copper core using ground earth return?

[–]koksik202 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think you might be missing zero

[–]Air0x 3 points4 points  (3 children)

Such a simple thing, is indeed, mind bending. Imagine what we will have in a decade or two - Quantum Routers?

[–]Tamer_ 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Technology won't change drastically within a decade. We're still building the network cost-efficiently. Unless the needs in speed (unlikely within a short timeframe like 10 years) or bandwidth really explodes (doubles every year), a revolutionary technology will not be needed.

[–]race_herens[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I don't know... Between 2000 and 2010, internet trafic has increased more than 200x

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_traffic

[–]derpyderp_ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Forced packet routing makes a huge difference here.

[–]FastEddieRich 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Wow...yeah...thanks for this!

[–]grenade71822 2 points3 points  (7 children)

Round trip is 285 ms (142.5 one way) and would probably not be in a straight line.

[–]race_herens[S] 6 points7 points  (6 children)

That is why I said "around the world"! It's really hard to know the path of optical fibers. It can go through Siberia or through America.

[–]DigbyCaesar 2 points3 points  (5 children)

Compare the tracert names against http://www.cablemap.info/ and you should be able to work out most of it.

[–]race_herens[S] 5 points6 points  (4 children)

Yesterday, my traceroute went to Lausanne -> London -> Hong Kong -> Taiwan -> Sydney -> Auckland. I estimated it to be a ~45'000 km round trip.

The thing is it can also go to Lausanne -> Paris -> New-York -> Hong Kong -> Sydney -> Auckland.

[–]DigbyCaesar 2 points3 points  (3 children)

That's more the routing.

I read path to mean the physical location of said fibre, hence the map.

[–]race_herens[S] 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Ahah I got no time for that! Plus they don't give the physical location on land!

[–]Bbrhuft 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Also, the speed of light in glass is approx. 1.55 slower than the speed of light in a vacuum.

[–]race_herens[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That is why I made a small computation taking the fiber refractive index into account and thus with a speed of light ~200'000 km/s. Maybe 200 ms is too generous, 220 ms could be more accurate.

[–]nk1 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's always fascinating to do a ping test and watch the data fly all over the world in no time at all.

It's even more interesting from a phone because you have all the extra steps of grabbing account data and making sure you are authorized to access the Internet THEN your phone sends out a signal, the tower converts it, grabs what you requested, and delivers it.

The process is so complex and it all happens in a fraction of a second!

[–]newmewuser 0 points1 point  (2 children)

With or without NSA tampering? You should also test with real applications.

[–]mrjohnson2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The NSA uses inline fiber optic beam splitters, so that the information being captured is unaware.

[–]race_herens[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

With or without a transit in China haha. I don't think NSA slows the trafic down. They just make a real time copy of it.

[–]drewbond 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Soon we'll be pinging servers on the our moon

[–]haamfish 0 points1 point  (0 children)

what server did you ping?

sometimes CDN's get in the way.

[–]xHeero -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Welcome to the internet?