it it really interesting but simply "ignore the technical challenge for now" makes the Whole discussussion pointless, as the problem here ARE the technical challenges that a zero latency (above the theoretical limit) network implies... Anyway it is good to know the numbers: in my opinion a 37x factor, in this case is not so bad
Why is the Internet so Slow?
41–50 of 164 posts
Re: Why is the Internet so Slow?
#42If you want an easy speed up and you use a modern version of nginx, which you should for many reasons but chiefly performance and security. Add these lines to your nginx config file: # Only support HTTPS and enable http2 # which will allow you to multiplex requests. # In a separate config do a 301 from normal HTTP # for all paths / subdomains. listen 443 ssl http2 default_server; listen [::]:443 ssl http2 default_ser…
Is there similar things that can be done on a go-based server? Particularly Caddy...
Cache everything you can. This is a good lecture on scaling a site http://15418.courses.cs.cmu.edu/spring2016/lecture/webscalin...
Re: Why is the Internet so Slow?
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
My car is a lot faster than 108 km/h (0.03 km/sec) :)
In the context of the speed of light, it really isn't.
greydius corrected me asserting that the factor between ligth speed and car speed is 10 millions, and not one million as I said.
But in true there are production cars that pass 430 km/h, resulting in a factor of about 2.5 millions. A lot less than 10 millions.
Re: Why is the Internet so Slow?
#44If you want an easy speed up and you use a modern version of nginx, which you should for many reasons but chiefly performance and security. Add these lines to your nginx config file: # Only support HTTPS and enable http2 # which will allow you to multiplex requests. # In a separate config do a 301 from normal HTTP # for all paths / subdomains. listen 443 ssl http2 default_server; listen [::]:443 ssl http2 default_ser…
I'm not very experienced with these nginx settings. Could you explain how this improves speed so much for you? It seems that you've followed [1] by the similarity of what that suggests to what you've suggested. tcp_nodelay seems to force it to not wait 0.2 seconds, which nginx does so that it doesn't send lots of really small packets. I can see this increasing speed by 200ms (a lot) but increases network traffic as a…
The horse's mouth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9045125
Re: Why is the Internet so Slow?
#45If you want an easy speed up and you use a modern version of nginx, which you should for many reasons but chiefly performance and security. Add these lines to your nginx config file: # Only support HTTPS and enable http2 # which will allow you to multiplex requests. # In a separate config do a 301 from normal HTTP # for all paths / subdomains. listen 443 ssl http2 default_server; listen [::]:443 ssl http2 default_ser…
I just tried this and was unable to measure any difference.
Variation in page load times far outweighed any difference the config change might have brought.
So, YMMV.
From a theoretical standpoint I agree http/2 should help (although in practice I didn't measure any difference). I can't see why tcp_nodelay would help except in extremely niche applications (sending tiny responses with lots of pauses?)
Re: Why is the Internet so Slow?
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or any form of electromagnetic wave passing media with low dielectric constant. Like microwave communication in athmosphere. Speed of propagation in typical cable is around 66% of c. That is not too bad. More latency is probably caused by buffering. Speed of light is just too low. We should get a lobby-group working on it and the limiting laws of physics.
AFAIK (and I don't know much), c is also a huge limiting factor in processor design, since high-enough clock speeds put a hard cap on how far a signal can travel between ticks, even assuming perfect components. Agree that c is too low and we should attempt to simulate a universe in which it is higher and go live there instead.
(source: used to write chip design software)
The timing calculation approximation we used had no term for 'c' in it at all. The simple approximation is just an RC timing curve: total capacitance of the wire and gates that you need to change, through the on-resistance of the driving FET. The more complex version treats each wire as a transmission line and incorporates its inductance, but ultimately for electrical signals travelling in a medium near a ground the important factor is the dielectric, not the speed of light.
The other massive limiting factor in processor design is heat conduction.
Re: Why is the Internet so Slow?
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or any form of electromagnetic wave passing media with low dielectric constant. Like microwave communication in athmosphere. Speed of propagation in typical cable is around 66% of c. That is not too bad. More latency is probably caused by buffering. Speed of light is just too low. We should get a lobby-group working on it and the limiting laws of physics.
You really shouldn't be complaining about the speed of light. We're leaving a lot on the table by sending the data along the surface of earth instead of through it. With neutrino-based signalling you eliminate both the lower propagation speed and the suboptimal path.
Couldn't satellite distributed quantum entanglement also accomplish sending messages "through" the earth once properly set up?
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/china-shatters-ld... http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/two-steps-closer-t...
Re: Why is the Internet so Slow?
#48If you're thinking, "it's fast enough!" -- remember that a system's performance determines what you're able to build on top of it. If GPU designers had said "it's fast enough" ten years ago, for example, modern neural-net AI may never have happened. It's easy to imagine doing the same things faster, but it's harder to picture the new things that a lower-latency Internet would make possible.
I don't think anyone that has ever used Skype, VoIP, Facetime, etc has thought "this is fast enough".
A fair question might be whether that's an issue with the internet, or the way it's used. In particular, p2p chatting vs going through a central server comes to mind. And a point comes when speed is constrained by the speed of light (especially for latency sensitive applications).
Re: Why is the Internet so Slow?
#49No mention of bufferbloat, it's in mainline linux since a few releases now. If all devices used these patches or applied the same logic, could it also work ?
Re: Why is the Internet so Slow?
#50CDF = cumulative distribution function
People who care about how fast the internet is are not the same set as people who know statistics acronyms, and they don't show up in a simple web search. You know how else we can make the internet better and faster? Publishing articles with software and licenses that make it easy for people to improve and share your article.