0.1 Seconds Under the Sea
Contents › Chapter 5 The Way Back
The video plays
About 0.11 seconds after you tap — the video appears
View in 3DA round trip in about 0.11 seconds
From the Busan shore, the boxes pass through the telecom building and the rooftop tower. Then they become radio waves again and reach your phone. Your phone puts the boxes back in order by number and shows the video. About 0.11 seconds after you tapped. That is how long it takes to go about 9,200 km under the sea and back.
Why?No matter how fast light is, reaching the other side of the world takes time. One round trip to a computer in the US always takes about 0.11 seconds. The internet is not in the clouds. It is cables laid under the land and the sea.
Learn moreIn real life, the trip is made a few more times before the video appears. When a connection starts, the two sides first trade a greeting like "Are you ready?" "Yes, ready." So a video from across the sea can take 0.3 to 1 second to appear.
- Time
- 102 ms → 111 ms
Simplified route · light in glass at about 200,000 km per second
View this scene in 3D →Read more
Wikipedia: Latency (engineering)
More in the series
Times are simplified values, calculated from a simplified route (Busan → south of Japan → Pacific → Oregon, about 9,200 km) and the speed of light in glass (about 200,000 km per second). Real times vary with the carrier, the route and traffic.