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AWS data center latencies, visualized

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Re: AWS data center latencies, visualized

#131

Post by nullindividual »

CountVonGuetzli wrote: post #109

It would be really cool if it didn't just show the ping, but how much worse it is compared to the theoretical optimum (speed of light in fiber optic medium, which I believe is about 30% slower than c). I raise this because I've been in multiple system architecture meetings where people were complaining about latency between data centers, only to later realize that it was pretty close to what is theoretically possible…

Doesn't look like this is a ping[0]! Which is good. Rather it is a socket stream connecting over tcp/443. Ping (ICMP) would be a poor metric.

[0] https://github.com/mda590/cloudping.co/blob/8918ee8d7e632765...

Re: AWS data center latencies, visualized

#132

Post by not_kurt_godel »

nabla9 wrote: post #127
CountVonGuetzli wrote: post #109

It would be really cool if it didn't just show the ping, but how much worse it is compared to the theoretical optimum (speed of light in fiber optic medium, which I believe is about 30% slower than c). I raise this because I've been in multiple system architecture meetings where people were complaining about latency between data centers, only to later realize that it was pretty close to what is theoretically possible…

You would have to map out the cables to do that. Light in fiber optic cable travels roughly 70% of the speed of light ~210,000 km/s Earth's circumferences is ~40,000 kilometers. Direct route from the other side of Earth to another would be roughly 100 milliseconds, round trip 200 ms.

Cable mapping would be nice but 100ms is a meaningfully long amount of time to make straight-line comparison worthwhile

Re: AWS data center latencies, visualized

#133

Post by matthewdgreen »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #126
sebzim4500 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's definitely a few billion a year in revenue for Starlink if they sell very low latency, medium bandwidth connections between Asia, the US, Europe and Australia to trading firms. Even if the reliability is much worse than fiber.

Starlink latencies sadly aren't competitive due to the routing paths it uses. And sadly there are currently no competitors to starlink.

The routing paths traveling via ground stations, you mean? My understanding is that they were experimenting with improvements to this, they just haven't deployed anything yet.

Re: AWS data center latencies, visualized

#134

Post by pclmulqdq »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #133
pclmulqdq wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starlink latencies sadly aren't competitive due to the routing paths it uses. And sadly there are currently no competitors to starlink.

The routing paths traveling via ground stations, you mean? My understanding is that they were experimenting with improvements to this, they just haven't deployed anything yet.

No, even with proposed inter-satellite routing paths, they are too slow. The trading industry has very much done the math on this.

The comparison is against radio and hollow-core fiber, not conventional fiber.

Re: AWS data center latencies, visualized

#135

Post by dredmorbius »

alex_suzuki wrote: post #47

I have red-green color blindness, which makes it hard/impossible for me to distinguish between the 200ms lines. This affects about 8% of male population btw, maybe you can add a color-blind mode, very nice visualization otherwise!

FWIW, anyone reading on a monochrome e-ink device will have similar issues.

Those are becoming somewhat more prevalent these days.

Re: AWS data center latencies, visualized

#136

Post by sandworm101 »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #133
pclmulqdq wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starlink latencies sadly aren't competitive due to the routing paths it uses. And sadly there are currently no competitors to starlink.

The routing paths traveling via ground stations, you mean? My understanding is that they were experimenting with improvements to this, they just haven't deployed anything yet.

A radio will beat starlink on ping times. Even a simple ham bouncing a off the ionosphere can win out over an orbiting satellite, at least for the very small amounts of data needed for a trade order. The difficulty in such schemes is reliability, which can be hit-or-miss depending on a hundred factors.

Re: AWS data center latencies, visualized

#138

Post by eitally »

CountVonGuetzli wrote: post #109

It would be really cool if it didn't just show the ping, but how much worse it is compared to the theoretical optimum (speed of light in fiber optic medium, which I believe is about 30% slower than c). I raise this because I've been in multiple system architecture meetings where people were complaining about latency between data centers, only to later realize that it was pretty close to what is theoretically possible…

I'm under the impression that within the hyperscalers (and probably the big colo/hosting firms, too), this is known. It's important to them, and customers, especially when a customer is trying to architect an HA or DR system and needs to ensure they don't inadvertently choose a region (or even a zone that isn't physically in the same place at other zones in the same region) that has "artificially" (can be for all kinds of legitimate reasons) latency from the primary zone.

This is not an uncommon scenario. My current employer specializes in SAP migrations to cloud and this is now a conversation we have with both AWS & GCP networking specialists when pricing & scoping projects... after having made incorrect assumptions and being bitten by unacceptable latency in the past.

Re: AWS data center latencies, visualized

#140

Post by liveoneggs »

CountVonGuetzli wrote: post #109

It would be really cool if it didn't just show the ping, but how much worse it is compared to the theoretical optimum (speed of light in fiber optic medium, which I believe is about 30% slower than c). I raise this because I've been in multiple system architecture meetings where people were complaining about latency between data centers, only to later realize that it was pretty close to what is theoretically possible…

IIRC about 125 miles per ms
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