Suddenly light speed doesn't seem that fast

[Polymathic]

i did a some wolfram alpha searches and came out with these figures

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+between++london+and+durban+

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+between++new+york+and+durban+

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+between++tokyo+and+durban+

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+between++mumbai+and+durban+

it seems that even with the best technology currently available we will always have bad latency.

 

[Grimlock]

Still wouldn't mind getting that ping to overseas.

 

[Lycanthrope]

Still wouldn't mind getting that ping to overseas.

Me neither

 

[Pilgrim]

Keep in mind that is just one way, ping is 2x that. At least there is room for improvement

 

[unskinnybob]

45ms there and 45ms back would pwn.

 

[Guantanamo]

Take into account that the distances are actually greater due to the fact that cables aren't straight. Still wouldn't mind those pings though but its a pipe dream ,excuse the pun, my latency to the Johannesburg sever on speedtest.net is worse then the time it would take to travel to london.

 

[fragtion]

As mentioned:
1) The cables aren't birds-eye / perfectly straight, they go from inland (JHB) to coast (CPT), from there along the coast, around the continent, to the destination, where the same thing happens.
2) Latency isn't measured one way, it's round-trip, so a ping from location A to location B goes A->B->A (A received pong from B)
3) Routing policies between ISP's are not completely open to best geographical topology... for example, sometimes routing from south africa to london might go via USA, etc. Hopefuly one day this will change, so that we could actually GET 120 ping to India/Malaysia rather than being routed through the UK every time; maybe one day we'll also have a cable going straight to Brazil as well... and let's not forget that right now routing to other African countries is often also via EU/US... very inefficient for people requiring lower latency (especially gamers), but easier for the ISP's to manage

I've done a lot of personal research, and the lowest real pings I've obtained are as follows:
Cape town to London: about 145ms round-trip (SAT3), 210ms (Seacom)
Cape town to New York/Miami: about 240 ms round-trip (SAT3)
Cape Town to Hong Kong: about 100ms round-trip (SAFE). With this routing, pings to most neighbouring eastern countries stays around 130ms
Durban to India: about 130ms round-trip (Seacom)

Ping from Cape Town to Joburg is usually around 20ms, Joburg to Durban about 15ms, Joburg to Bloemfontein about 10ms

 

[Polymathic]

As mentioned:
1) The cables aren't birds-eye / perfectly straight, they go from inland (JHB) to coast (CPT), from there along the coast, around the continent, to the destination, where the same thing happens.
2) Latency isn't measured one way, it's round-trip, so a ping from location A to location B goes A->B->A (A received pong from B)
3) Routing policies between ISP's are not completely open to best geographical topology... for example, sometimes routing from south africa to london might go via USA, etc. Hopefuly one day this will change, so that we could actually GET 120 ping to India/Malaysia rather than being routed through the UK every time; maybe one day we'll also have a cable going straight to Brazil as well... and let's not forget that right now routing to other African countries is often also via EU/US... very inefficient for people requiring lower latency (especially gamers), but easier for the ISP's to manage

I've done a lot of personal research, and the lowest real pings I've obtained are as follows:
Cape town to London: about 145ms round-trip (SAT3), 210ms (Seacom)
Cape town to New York/Miami: about 240 ms round-trip (SAT3)
Cape Town to Hong Kong: about 100ms round-trip (SAFE). With this routing, pings to most neighbouring eastern countries stays around 130ms
Durban to India: about 130ms round-trip (Seacom)

Ping from Cape Town to Joburg is usually around 20ms, Joburg to Durban about 15ms, Joburg to Bloemfontein about 10ms

All the pings I have done to those areas are at least double that.

 

[Pada]

I can vouch for Fragtion on the SEACOM connection. I've played a couple of CS1.6 games on servers in France with 250ms latency by using Stellenbosch University's TENET connection (which uses SEACOM for international b/w).
As for the other tests, I've never even come close to those values!

Thanks for those results Fragtion - truely eye opening

 

[Gordon_R]

All the pings I have done to those areas are at least double that.

Those are 'best-case' scenarios, with no congestion (and assuming a minimum number of hops). The last month (World Cup) has not been good for latency. There is also little point in running tests with the current 'alternative' routing.

In general I agree with Fragtion's comments, although being on MWeb (and based in Cape Town) I never come close to the SAT-3 figures. I did run some tests on SAT-3 (SAIX) yesterday, but the line was congested.

Some figures seem too low: The CT-Jhb route is close to 28ms (never 20ms). CT-Jhb-Dbn-HK is close to 175ms (never 100ms). A more realistic figure for CT-London is about 185ms. BTW: Routing to London never goes via USA!

India via SEACOM can be fairly quick, my best time on CT-Jhb-Dbn-Mumbia was 135ms.