LinuxPlanet: Netli, Linux Take Web to Warp Speeds

“The Internet, too, is afflicted by the distance/time problem.
Even though data moves at very close to the speed of light, we all
constantly run into examples of distance-induced delays. If I were
to pull up a Web page from a server in Chicago, in less than an
eyeblink it will be in my Mozilla browser, because Chicago is right
up the pipe that services my hometown. If I tried to pull the same
size page from a similarly powered computer in Malaysia, however, I
can reasonably expect delays of 4, 6, even 9 seconds before the
page content even hits my browser.

“Nine seconds is not a lot of time in the grand scheme of our
lives, and occasional delays of this nature seem acceptable to us
as we surf around the world. But if you are running a site where
commerce or connectivity is absolutely paramount, nine seconds is
an eternity where customers can get dropped, packets lost, and all
the other problems that can occur with lengthy HTTP requests.
Multiply that nine seconds by millions of page views per day, and
pretty soon you are talking real money lost to the ether.

“Distance equals time, and time, as always, equals money…”

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