WACS - EU Latency reduction?

[saffakanera]

WACS - EU Latency reduction - 55ms monster?

Hi guys,

With WACS coming online in a month from now, can we expect a latency drop to the UK down from the standard 200ms range from ISPs who decide to utilize its service?

 

[Tinuva]

Possibly by 1-5ms, maybe eeven 10ms, its newer technology, however don't be surprised if there will be no difference. The speed of light can't be changed, only the path can be made shorter than SAT3.

 

[saffakanera]

Possibly by 1-5ms, maybe eeven 10ms, its newer technology, however don't be surprised if there will be no difference. The speed of light can't be changed, only the path can be made shorter than SAT3.

Can you tell how much less the actual distance is reduced to the UK than from SAT3? Isn't SAT3 on the Eastern side? It looks like SAT3 terminates in Portugal?

 

[saffakanera]

Latency (round trip): 93 milliseconds
Distance (round-trip): 28000 kilometers (14k x 2)
Connection speed: 56000 bits per second

Obviously there are other factors involved, like pinging from JHB to CPT for instance would probably add another 50ms. So we could look at low 100s here? Like 120-150 possibly?

 

[Tinuva]

Can you tell how much less the actual distance is reduced to the UK than from SAT3? Isn't SAT3 on the Eastern side? It looks like SAT3 terminates in Portugal?

SAT3 is most definitely on the west coast, terminates in Portugal, where traffic follows another cable system (there are more than 1 option from there) to the UK.

WACS will also be on the West Coast, terminate in the UK directly unlike SAT3, but factors that will change the distance, are s till the amount of countries it Terminates in. It really is difficult to know what latency will be like, but one thing is for sure, the equipment used for WACS will be based on newer technology than that of SAT3, things like repeaters ect, so at least that should help a bit with latency.

120ms is only possible if you don't have to terminate in all the countries along the coast, follow as short as possible distance, and didn't need repeaters, which you do because the signal does get weaker after about 80-200km, at which point you need a repeater. I could be wrong on those values I am not actually someone that build fibre electronics.

 

[Tinuva]

ps. This is a pretty good cable map for cables in the ocean, including future cables:
http://www.submarinecablemap.com/

 

[saffakanera]

SAT3 is most definitely on the west coast, terminates in Portugal, where traffic follows another cable system (there are more than 1 option from there) to the UK.

WACS will also be on the West Coast, terminate in the UK directly unlike SAT3, but factors that will change the distance, are s till the amount of countries it Terminates in. It really is difficult to know what latency will be like, but one thing is for sure, the equipment used for WACS will be based on newer technology than that of SAT3, things like repeaters ect, so at least that should help a bit with latency.

120ms is only possible if you don't have to terminate in all the countries along the coast, follow as short as possible distance, and didn't need repeaters, which you do because the signal does get weaker after about 80-200km, at which point you need a repeater. I could be wrong on those values I am not actually someone that build fibre electronics.

Those must be some seriously good repeaters, or maybe fiber repeaters are able to actually repeat further than regular ethernet ones.

The terminations, do the packets first enter every router en route to the destination? Is it a serial link? Capetown > Africa 1 > Africa 2 > Africa 3 > London? Or parallel?

 

[czc]

Would be great for when D3 launches.

 

[drs]

With WACS coming online in a month from now, can we expect a latency drop to the UK down from the standard 200ms range from ISPs who decide to utilize its service?

If your ISP is currently routing your traffic via SAT3 and they were to route your traffic via WACS in future, you wouldn't see much of an improvement (as others have said); but if you ISP is currently routing your traffic via SEACOM and they were to route your traffic via WACS in future, you might see a more noticable improvement (possibly depending on quite where you are in South Africa).

 

[Tinuva]

Those must be some seriously good repeaters, or maybe fiber repeaters are able to actually repeat further than regular ethernet ones.

80km is nothing funny, its based on normal SDH fibre modules, however repeaters are not small modules, and like I said, I am talking without actually knowing.

Lets take an out of date module, which isn't commonly used anymore:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/modules/ps872/ps139/index.html

On that page, they mention a premium module can do up to 100km. And that is only Metro-Ethernet, not SDH or even newgen SDH.