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AWS data center latencies, visualized

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Re: AWS data center latencies, visualized

#121

Post by dmurray »

sandworm101 wrote: post #117
sebzim4500 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'practical' way to beat fiber optics is to use either (i) a series of overground direct microwave connections (often used by trading firms) (ii) a series of laser links between low altitude satellites. This would be faster in principle for long distances, and presumably Starlink will eventually offer this service to people that are very latency sensitive

Low-bandwidth/low-latency people tend to also demand high reliability and consistency. A low-orbit satellite network might be fast but, because sats move to quickly, cannot be consistent in that speed. Sats also won't ever connect data centers other than perhaps for administrative stuff. The bandwidth/reliability/growth potential just isn't there compared to bundles of traditional fiber.

> Low-bandwidth/low-latency people tend to also demand high reliability and consistency.

For trading applications, people will absolutely pay for a service that is hard down 75% of the time and has 50% packet loss the rest, but saves a millisecond over the fastest reliable line. Because otherwise someone else will be faster than you when the service is working.

They can get reliability and consistency with a redundant slower line.

Re: AWS data center latencies, visualized

#122

Post by jedberg »

tmalsburg2 wrote: post #115

Very roughly 1/3 of the speed of light. One third is lost to the physical medium it seems. What accounts of the remaining third and how much could be plausibly shaved off of it?

Undersea cable routing. For example there are no undersea cables from Ireland to the European continent. All that traffic has to land in England first and go through a few routers to get sent on its way.

South America and Africa are even worse in that regard. Very few if any direct links.

Re: AWS data center latencies, visualized

#123

Post by plantain »

londons_explore wrote: post #111
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…

clicking around that map, I don't see any examples where the latency is a long way out of line with the distance. Obviously it's theoretically possible to do ~40% better by using hollow fibers and as-the-crow-flies fiber routing, but few are willing to pay for that.

AU South Africa & South America is way less than distance.

Re: AWS data center latencies, visualized

#125

Post by schnable »

bustling-noose wrote: post #7
JoshTriplett wrote: post #6

The data is really useful, and the globe is visually impressive, but it feels like it'd be more practically useful to have a flat world map that shows all the data centers at once and makes it easier to read the lines without them getting excessively close to each other.

A 2D world may not give you the perception of how far some of these locations really are. I think an option to switch between the two would be better.

The lines between points can be drawn to show curvature, like an airplane route map.

Re: AWS data center latencies, visualized

#126

Post by pclmulqdq »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #120
sandworm101 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low-bandwidth/low-latency people tend to also demand high reliability and consistency. A low-orbit satellite network might be fast but, because sats move to quickly, cannot be consistent in that speed. Sats also won't ever connect data centers other than perhaps for administrative stuff. The bandwidth/reliability/growth potential just isn't there compared to bundles of traditional fiber.

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.

Re: AWS data center latencies, visualized

#127

Post by nabla9 »

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.

Re: AWS data center latencies, visualized

#128

Post by philipwhiuk »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #95
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!

It's sad that this is the top comment for the post. Many people have stopped posting their crappy work online due to harsh comments like yours. There's no easy reply to your comment. Maybe we should be less critical specially with "Make it fit for my workflow" type comment, and more so if it is built by some random guy in their free time, and not say a project which is asking money.

Maybe we should be building accessible UIs by default rather than treating an actual disability as a 'my workflow' problem.

Re: AWS data center latencies, visualized

#129

Post by jbkkd »

jedberg wrote: post #10

How did you choose which datacenters to include? For example, eu-south-2 (Spain) is missing. The reason I know is because I worked on a project that required latency to be under 30ms between datacenters, and we had to use eu-west-1 (Ireland) and eu-south-2. Turns out that latency is closer to 42ms, mainly because there are no undersea cables between Ireland and the continent (they only go to England, then they have t…

Israel (il-central-1) is also missing.

Re: AWS data center latencies, visualized

#130

Post by philipwhiuk »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #114
sealeck wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this an uncharitable take – the parent comment is just proposing an improvement that would really help them given their colour-blindness (they also say they like the visualisation). Personally I find part of the reason for putting things on the internet is to allow other people to use them and obtain their feedback.

Every product has flaws which are outside of design scope. Pointing that is unnecessary. If I want feedback on my quick and dirty project, I want it on within the scope of design, not the missing features, bad accessibility etc. Specially HN crowd is very susceptible to feeling for accessibility comment. Return of "think of poor kids in Africa".

> If I want feedback on my quick and dirty project, I want it on within the scope of design, not the missing features, bad accessibility etc.

This wasn't posted with that directive.

And if your "design is great" but your implementation sucks then maybe the design sucks too.

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