I remember reading a story about an email server that was limited to sending emails within 150 miles. Through a lot of digging, they found it was due to an auto-timeout timer getting reset to 0ms. Anything further than 150 miles would cause a 1ms delay and thus get rejected for taking too long.
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simplejack@lemmy.world 6 months agoIMHO, data centers kind of need to be somewhat close to important population areas in order to ensure low latency.
You need a spot with attainable land, room to scale, close proximity to users, and decent infrastructure for power / connectivity. You can’t actually plop something out in the middle of BFE.
I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world 6 months ago
baru@lemmy.world 6 months ago
In case anyone wants to read that: www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html
abhibeckert@lemmy.world 6 months ago
They really don’t. I live in regional Australia - the nearest data center is 1300 miles away. It’s perfectly fine.
Xtallll@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
The earth has a circumference of 25,000 miles, and the speed of light in a fiber cable is 124,000 miles per second, so going the whole way around the earth would take .2 seconds(assuming you could send a signal that far).
simplejack@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Sure, but infrastructure is not just fiber, and there is a lot of stuff in between your long stretches of fiber.
I’m not a sys ops guy, but I can pull from different data centers and see measurable differences
This is a pretty well known phenomenon. That’s why we have cloud data centers located close to major metro areas.
douglasg14b@lemmy.world 6 months ago
That’s… Not how internet infrastructure works.
And cables are not in straight lines between you and the destination.
Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 6 months ago
For the majority of applications you need data centers for, latency just doesn’t matter. Bandwidth, storage space, and energy costs for example are all generally far more important.
empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
The number of data centers in Prineville/Hermiston/Umatilla, OR beg to differ
While latnecy matters sometimes, there’s still a lot of data center services that care a lot less and can be put anywhere.
simplejack@lemmy.world 6 months ago
One of those cities is pretty close to Redmond. The other 2 are 2-3 hours away from a major population center. The San Francisco equivalent would be data centers in Sacramento. Not exactly next door, but close enough to ensure that latency isn’t terrible for loading an e-commerce site or something.