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Not sure if this the the right place to ask the question. But has anyone had any experience with ping response times or knows of an good to average response time for transatlantic traffic? we have an application which drops it's connection if it sees poor latency. The supplier(US based) is telling me our response of 75ms is excessive, however all our UK based pings are all within the realm of 1-3ms so i believe the internet connection is good.

Michael
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    You're going to have to move to New York. – Michael Hampton Apr 20 '15 at 14:14
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    It's about 5.5 ms per 1000 miles as an absolute physical limit, or 11ms round-trip. At 4000 miles, you're looking at 44ms for light to travel in a straight line, in a vacuum, with no room for error. Now multiply that by 1.5 as a ballpark to compensate for the speed of electricity vs the speed of light and for any switching in between, and you're at 66ms. @MichaelHampton is correct: You need to move. – Hyppy Apr 21 '15 at 16:23

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Theoretically the lowest ping coast to coast from the UK to the US would be 57ms due to a number of factors such as the speed of light in optical fibres being slower and the optical lines not being straight.

In reality response times are much slower. New york for us is 72ms. This is exceptional. We have a direct fibre connection to the location in London where the lines from the US connect to the rest of the UK (Telehouse) and we still get pings up to 300ms to locations on the East Coast.

75ms would not be excessive for something locally in the UK. It wouldn't be great. 100ms would concern me. 120ms would be excessive. Locally in the UK, now across the atlantic.

ZZ9
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  • Thanks for that. Yeah the application is grabbing data from the east coast, we're in central London, so I thought ping replies in the 70s and 80s would be fine. Their threshold, is measured in missed heartbeats of 3 seconds lots. 25 of these and the Application is disconnected, which sounds a lot of in-actively. – Michael Apr 21 '15 at 13:27
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You can have @ 200 ms delay, just test the connection to another US supplier from the same area, ask for specific information: what is their minimal ping tolerance?

75 ms to US is really good, generally speaking but that depends on what you need it for and how you use the connection. Don't do the comparison with the UK though 1-3 ms delay means that you are in the same Data Center, it is not a good measure.

Alex H
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  • Thanks for the response. Looking around I also thought 75ms is a decent speed. The problem I have is the data is of the moving financial type, so any poor latency results in the data being stale, and disconnecting my users application from it's feed. I'll need to go back to the supplier. Thanks again. – Michael Apr 20 '15 at 13:09
  • Is this Sage by any chance? – ZZ9 Apr 20 '15 at 13:55
  • No not sage, which I've had problems with before, but nothing like this. The application is a trading tool. – Michael Apr 20 '15 at 16:45