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Shortage of Electricity Drives Data Center Talks
Engineer-Poet writes "Per the San Jose Mercury News, competitors such as Google and Yahoo are meeting to discuss the issue of electricity in Silicon Valley. How much of the USA's 4038 billion kWh/year goes into data centers? Enough to make a difference. Data centers are moving out of California to spread the load and avoid a single-point-of-failure scenario. This is a serious matter; as Andrew Karsner (assistant secretary of energy efficiency and renewable energy for the Department of Energy) asked, 'What happens to national productivity when Google goes down for 72 hours?' I'm sure nobody wants to know." From the article: "Concern about electricity pricing and volatility has led Microsoft to talk with its network manufacturers about building more efficient servers. IBM and Hewlett-Packard -- which both build data centers -- want to improve efficiency at the facilities. AMD promotes changing the design of data centers to increase airflow to keep the supercomputers cool."
When Google goes down, productivity probably goes up.
Can google really go down? i mean it has SOO many servers its insane
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National Productivity would sky rocket if people couldnt waste time at work googling the latest fad, such as cats wearing tuxedos or paris hilton and lindsey lohan latest alliance.
One thing that needs to be looked at with the congregation of data centers is why are they like that? Here in the North East, any kind of bandwidth will cost an arm and a leg compared to the North West area. I've recently been involved in pricing out Colocations for one of our webservers and a simple T1 costs 4-5 times in the N.E. that it costs in the N.W. I'm sure we'd see more evenly distributed data centers if costs we evenly distributed too. How about taking some of those new 40% efficiency solar panels and moving some data centers down to the S.W. for a start?
Actually many analists say that if performance per watt is to remain constant over the next few years, power costs could easily overtake hardware costs, possibly by a large margin.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
We just started switching from Intel to AMD hardware in our servers (HP DL385). Not that we pay per Kw/h, but I figure less power consumption means less heat and less fried hardware.
AMD has a website on the topic: Real Efficiency in the Data Center
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
Locals and guest workers would be hired to pedal for one-hour shifts each, generating some portion of the needed power and giving a boost to the local economy. Don't think "galley" -- think "self-sustaining"!
If you'd like to use this idea, please contact me via my Slashdot account. Thanks.
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
So Google has more money than it has electricity. And it's HQ'd in some of the most expensive real estate in the country. And its servers are remote to practically every user in the world.
That sounds like a perfect reason for nearly all of Google's servers to live distributed around the US, and the globe. With local operators for physical access, and global remote admins for most normal operations.
The past year or so we've heard all kinds of wild rumors about "googled in a box": supercomputers in a shipping container for rapid deployment around the world. How about just a briefcase of money dropped on the local economies to build datacenters in-place, the old fashioned way, without the alien assault tech strategy?
Cheaper, more redundant, more energy efficient (at least not overloaded). Sufficiently distributed, they could use lower-density energy generation, like solar/wind/environmental.
Google should force manufacturers and designers to make all our power consumption more efficient, using their buying power to improve the tech. Then they should use that tech in the more economical, reliable, power efficient way. Share the wealth and power with the rest of us who are keeping them hot.
--
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Custom, hands-free Linux installs. Instalinux
Not only is the power grid here pretty reliable (Maine didn't loose power like the rest of NE did a couple years back), but there's plenty of space, and they can save on cooling costs :-)
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
Now, I hope, people will start to understand why Sun and Intel are focussing so hard on performance-per-watt, and not just performance.
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Data center consolidation. ESX. Good Stuff.
Iran's BTU/capita is about 1/4th of the U.S., & its GDP/capita is about 1/4th of the U.S. (CIA World FactBook via "Bottomless Well" by Peter Huber & Mark Mills).
Personal Opinion: Deregulation has put emphasis on quarterly profits, not on reserve capacity of both power plants and the grid.
Congress only "works" an average of 3 days a week or less. Some heads in Washington need some knocks.
Given the abundance of geothermal power in iceland (hence why aluminium ore is transported there for refinement) perhaps a few trucks of fibre need to be put in place - Reykjavik becoming the next big hub for data centers... Lots of power on tap, lots of cooling easily available (ie its bloody freezing there), and the good old days of meetings in hot tubs could come back too - though obviously thermal springs rather than hot tubs....
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Google had the right idea when they located their datacenter in Oregon, in a colder climate so they don't need as much air con power, and right next to a big hydro power plant.
What's the point of locating your datacenter in an area with high ground prices, a history of electric power supply problems and a hot climate?
It's still a good idea to reduce server power because it reduces both the operating power AND the cooling power required.
On another note, has anyone noticed that language used impacts performance per Watt?
So, we need more power, or we need to spread data centers out, or both? In this age of networking, I really don't see why most data centers cluster in Silicon Valley. There seems to be a great benefit to spreading data centers out, especially when other factors, such as natural disasters, are factored in. And lets face it, we will need more electricity, regardless of how efficient we become. We are integrating more technology into our lives, and population growth isn't slowing down. Its time to start building more nuclear power plants. It can be done safely, and more fossil fuel power plants are not the answer. If anything, we need fewer.
http://bgcommonsense.blogspot.com
If IBM can do it[1], I'm sure Google and Yahoo can too.
[1] <http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/bcrs/sites/ste rling-forest.html>
It isn't just power, how about air conditioning and quality of life. Many of us don't like the idea of living in a concrete jungle. I would take a pay cut to live in a cabin in the mountains by some fishing streams in a heart beat. So go to central BC, with a power dam right next door, 6 months a year the cool air is supplied by mother nature and land is cheap. Or perhaps northern Alberta or even northern Saskatchewan.
Reducing at the centres is the first logical step as the reduction is measureable and is a potential cost savings over the long term. I hope that, in consolidating data centres, the technology will be passed quickly on to consumers.
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
Whoa, what a wonderful unit! It translates to 460 GW.
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...I'd say productivity increases. videos.google.com, groups.google.com, images.google.com and gmail.com are all great ways to waste time when someone's at work... ... (I LOVE ellipses. They are SO annoying...)
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I realize the article was specific to the Silicon Valley area, but what about the rest of the country? What about the manufacturing base that has all but disappeared from the US. The auto and steel industries use tremendous amounts of power. Since those industries are now a fraction of what they once were isn't there now excess electrical capacity in those former manufacturing areas? Companies frequently are offered tax breaks to open up shop in a particular area, what about a power price break?
Heck, even in Hungary, Google has datacenter presence. The load is already distributed smartly.
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Be yourself no matter what they say
You gotta remmeber that, when a blackout hits a huge swath of area, it also brings down the *client machines* in that area as well, so your backup centre doesn't necessairily have to handle your entire peak load.
Google only needs one of two redundant data centers (one in the East, one in the West, one Mid-Central) to basically ensure they can whether any power loss scenario. If they had 3 such separate centers (which I have no doubt they already have), the only way they're going to be totally off line is if the whole national grid goes down - in which case Google should be the least of your worries if you're a lawmaker.
People who manage and run data centers have to think it through before making changes. Many servers that are more than a year old were not designed for energy efficiencies. To top that, they weren't designed to take advantage of natural efficiencies in telecomms data centers. Most telecomms equipment is designed to run off of -48VDC. This has the effect of reducing the number of wasteful 115VAC to DC conversions along with the subsequent losses to heat that have to be removed by A/C systems. I've seen estimates that show the possibility of up to a 35% reduction in power and A/C costs simply by converting the AC power supplies in servers to DC power supplies.
Additionally, much of the forced air (from the floor upwards) A/C systems I've seen in data centers is not configured properly. There are vented tiles in places they shouldn't be, and not where they should be... causing hotspots and A/C problems in general.
I see datacenters with a wide variety of rack types. This can work, but often leads to inefficient use of the A/C systems. Its expensive to change racks, if its even possible (some vendors don't like their kit in someone else's rack) but this problem also needs to be looked at. A/C accounts for a huge energy drain in datacenters.
Using older hardware rather than buying new hardware saves on the short term, but the savings in energy costs by buying newer, more efficient hardware is something that datacenter managers HAVE to look at if this problem is to be solved. Its not just a matter of being 'green'. Its a matter of saving money that can then be used to bolster other parts/systems of the company.
I think that we'll see Google et al running VM clusters soon, where unused servers in the cluster are shutdown till they are needed for heavier traffic. In much the same way that complex automotive engines shut off several cylinders during low power requirement times, servers can be shut down (sleep mode) to save power until they are needed.
These are just some of the ideas that are currently the talk of datacenter managers and the vendors who support them. Try perusing the APC website, or other datacenter vendor's websites.
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I guess productivity would go through the floor considering the Apocalypse would be upon us
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"Shortage of Electricity Drives Data Center Talks" Fear not, next week we'll start rounding up those Elebits and we'll fix this right up.
Another interesting tidbit for comparison: a typical high-density rack puts out something in the neighborhood of 15KW of heat. An average home electric oven puts out about 7-8KW of heat. So each high-density rack is like having two ovens going full blast, 24x7.
Move your datacenter to Canada. You would not have to pay so much for AC. Quebec has the cheapest electricity in North America, and there is no serious tectonic fault line.
Remember the year 2000? They promised us flying cars. They delivered the PT Cruiser...
This url: http://www.uic.com.au/nip58.htm points shows a list of new nuclear plants being built in the US. Most of the building is happening in the Southeast. Nothing in CA.
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I have an office where, if you're on one access point instead of another on the same net, certain sites, Google in particular, are inaccessible. I have to do all my searching on MSN (pity me) instead when I'm in that area, and let me tell you with absolute certainty, productivity goes way down.
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea...."
RFC 1925
Data centers need to figure out a way to use the "waste" heat and turn it back into something useful, namely electricity. The problem is they generate a lot of heat, but it isn't hot enough, which seems screwy but for co generation you want as hot as possible. So the tech that needs to be developed (along with the obvious not generating so much waste heat through efficiency gains), is to find better ways to accumulate/move and use the low temp stuff they do have lots of. There are some alternative energy projects out there doing that with solar thermal to stirling engines for example.
Most equipement in data centers are space heaters. Walk behind any piece of equipement such as a server, disk array, or network switch and while super cool air in going in the front, very warm or hot air is coming out the back.
Basically, the equipement vendors haven't figured out how to get performance without putting the fastest, and therefore the hottest, processors and disks they can get. I don't think the problem will get solved as long as their response is "we need to get a better and more reliable supply of electricity" instead of "we're using too much electricity. How can we change this?".
So /. (I think I found that link here?) had a posting here short time ago linking to this video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846 673788606&pr=goog-sl
Is Google going to follow up with that train of thought and partner with a few investors (read: other data centers) to see if Dr. Bussard's fusion reactor is feasible?
Seems like a great opportunity to me....
The other hot data center real estate market is Austin, which has benefitted from a regional focus on energy efficiency, a strong technology community, and a skilled IT workforce. Phoenix and Kansas City have become active markets for backup data centers, while a dark horse market is northern New York, which used its abundant supply of cheap hydro power from the Niagara River to snare a $166 million HSBC data center.
RichM
Data Center Knowledge
Given US laws these days I suspect companies would prefer their data OUTSIDE of US jurisdiction....
That aside latency is not really a distance issue - its a network design issue.
If you put a big trunk of fiber (as my original comment was saying) from iceland to NY and iceland to london (thus making a nice redundant triangle with the current transatlantic connections) and connected it the the existing back bones sensibly the extra distance would not really be noticed.
Hops add far more latency than distance, most of the hops being to get up from your home/office connection to the back bone, then back down from the back bone to the company - hence why data centers are built where its very easy to get trunk connections - the proximity is a cost issue - fiber is expensive to lay.
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The 500 pound gorilla in the corner is that in a typical Silicon Valley datacenter only 50-60% of the power goes to the computers while the other half goes to the support equipment. It does not have to be this way, and things are changing. I have not yet walked into a datacenter that could not cut its total power usage by at least 25% (albeit, in some cases the design damage is done and the simple payback required to make it work would stretch to 4-5 years)(I'm looking at you, datacenters with dozens of 20-30 ton air-cooled compressors on the roof).
On the gross kWh/yr side, the vast majority of datacenters are unable to use outside air directly for cooling. A 24 hour a day load and they can't 'open the windows' to cool it at night (with appropriate filtration and redundant humidity control lockouts of course)? Come on people! It would even improve reliability (even 70F outdoor air could hold a well configured hot aisle/cold aisle datacenter). But that doesn't help trimming peak load, to do that you have to get the airflow right.
Efficiency in datacenters starts with just a basic understanding of airflow. You want it very hot behind the racks; you want that hot air to go directly back to your cooling unit not get recirc'd to a rack intake. And you have to have airflow controlled based on the cold aisle temperature to harvest energy savings (fan energy wastage is ridiculous in these things)(oh, and watch out for those server fans that ramp up if you push the cold aisle temp too high - not efficient to provoke a rack of those guys to start screaming).
You have to know hot aisle / cold aisle to properly design and operate an efficient datacenter, even if that exact configuration is not applicable. Period.
Of course, its not "that simple," but to the design engineers it certainly should be pretty straightforward work. The information is out there and more is in the pipeline. A good start on the basics of efficient datacenters is available here (full disclosure, I was associated with producing that report, so I am not impartial)(but don't blame me for the blurry graphics - I did not create the pdf!).
And for god's sake people, quit keeping these places at 55-60F - I'm freezing my butt off and you're making a mockery of your own 'tight humidity control' (70-90% RH at the server intakes, but a good 45% +/- 2% at the air handler return).
They ought to move them to Brandon, MB Canada. (1 hour from the US Border). They have an abundance of Cheap Electricity and it doesn't cost much to Keep your office cool most of the year.
AMD promotes changing the design of data centers to increase airflow to keep the supercomputers cool."
a sed.html
While AMD is using more power to carry away heat, Intel on the other hand made Blade servers which simply use less power to have less heat to carry away.
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/bladecenter/intel-b
The HS20 ultra low-power blade is a high-density blade server that features high-performance Intel® Xeon® dual-core processors.
Ideal applications include: Collaboration, Citrix, clusters and compute-centric applications.
Processor/Speed Intel Xeon 1.67- 2.00 GHz
Number of Processors 1 standard/2
Memory (Range) 512MB to 16GB
Disk (Range) 0GB -- 146GB
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The problem is such that PG&E is actually offering rebates of about $150 for every physical server that is virtualized. The rebates can go up to $4MILLION for each company. Then there is the additional savings companies will see in reduced power consumption by the servers themselves and cooling.
More info HERE
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The Sun T2000 stuff was obsolete the day it launched when compared to competing x86 solutions.
;).
http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2727
The CPU power/watt wasn't really that much better compared to x86 stuff of that time.
It is now nearly 9 months from that, and AMD and Intel have improved significantly. Where is the T2000 or T1 now? Look at Intel - their latest CPUs now trash AMD's by about the same margin which AMD used to trash Intel's offerings.
As long as you skip the Intel P4 stuff, and the silly AMD FX stuff (esp the quad one), the recent x86 stuff is pretty decent.
Go do performance/watt stuff yourself. Sure the Sun wins in some niche situations and in situations when you can actually use the crypto engine, but for most cases the T2000 isn't worth the bother.
Sun doesn't even bother doing specint rate for the T2000/T1 (maybe you can guess why looking at Anandtech's benchmarks) - they only do it for their SPARC IV+ and that gets:
Sun Fire E25K (72 processor) 144 cores, 72 chips, 2 cores/chip: 1413, 1644
144 cores, how much money and watts to get a score of 1413?
In contrast Intel's CPU gets a score of 64 with just 2 cores.
Intel(R) DG965WH motherboard( 2.93 GHz, Intel(R) Core(TM) 2 2 cores, 1 chip, 2 cores/chip: 64.3, 64.4
Maybe AMD will have an answer next year, but whatever it is, AMD and Intel in their frenetic race with each other, have left Sun's CPUs behind in the dust.
If your app works much better with a single system image with 144 cores then I guess you could buy Sun, but if rest of us need the processing power of 144 SPARC IV+ cores we'd get about twenty-two single CPU x86 servers with a total of 44 cores (or eleven dual CPU x86 servers), and figure out a way to make do with such "restrictions", like having money left over for storage, UPS, backups, generators, party for everyone etc.
You can still run Solaris on a Sun x86 server y'know
So I'm much rather see such developments done in northern Quebec or Ontario.
Actually, I think you're pointing at the wrong Province here (though you have a good idea). What you actually want is Manitoba. Manitoba Hydro has tons of cheap electricity. They have oodles of hydro-electric dams across the province as the province is lined with lakes and rivers. They're even expanding into wind-power b/c (lo and behold) being on the cold windy plains is pretty conducive to giant windmills.
For anyone who's been to Manitoba, there is simply no lack of space and no lack of energy. It is centrally-located, so North American support is ideal. 8 am in the maritimes is 6 am local, 5 pm on the west coast in only 7 pm local, so the work day can easily be covered in overlapping shifts. And of course, the distance is equal to everyone in North America.
It's very cold in the winter, so cooling costs are not a concern for 4-6 months (if anything, the server rooms would need to be slightly heated :). Oh yeah, I should also mention that Manitoba labour costs lag well behind Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and BC. Winnipeg (the capital) is a big city (750,000) with all of the big city amenities, so setting up here (even exporting staff) will be pleasantly surprising.
Plus, Manitoba is pretty low on the natural disasters front. Saskatchewan gets regular twisters, but Manitoba has very few. There are no earthquakes, no hurricanes (obv), no tsunamis, none of the big stuff. Primary risks are snow-storms and floods, which are both easy to mitigate (redundancy, support network and "higher ground").
Fact is, I'm kind of surprised that big software companies haven't shipped operations to Manitoba. The Cost of Living is significantly lower (10-25% then the aforementioned provinces) and the location is conducive to working with companies on both coasts. With new technologies providing inexpensive communication costs, what does it matter that your programmers are 2 time zones away? It's nice to have bodies nearby, but you can just roll out the "vid-phones" (Skype, Messenger, whatever) and save big on the labour (and overhead, office space is also cheaper). All without the long list of "downsides" to off-shoring. You're not dealing with language issues or time zone issues or education issues.
... or maybe just collapse Jupiter. How else are you going to keep that cloud of computronium fed? Sheesh.
For crying out loud, the parent is probably the most substantive and informative post on here... someone frickin' mod it up.
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I run a rather large department for one of the Investment Banks, with users / developers / support staff dispersed between London / Amsterdam / Cairo / Milan and Rio.
About one year ago the folks maintaining our applications infrastructure were advised by the companies responsible for the municipal grid to reduce our hardware footprint in London.
The reason? The grid was close to if not already overloaded, and increases in consumption were to be discouraged.
So we've been putting all new build into Central Europe, and slowly migrating existing systems over as we can.
A strange situation all around, if you ask me.
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If slashdot went down, perhaps the vast army of users, presumably GNU/Linux geeks, might increase their productivity 100 fold.
...."Monkey Boy" o "Money Boy"?
Such a scenario suggests that slashdot is a Microsoft troll, luring the GNU/Linux community into "daytime soaps" (OK, evening and late night soaps too) instead of being productive coders and advocates to the larger community.
The counter argument is that slashdot readers and posters are lurkers only, and couldn't contribute a useful line of code anyway.
-----------
Since this is undecidable without benefit of an experiment (so where IS the main power switch?) perhaps the best thing to do is to set up a bizarro-slashdot for the MS "community" (yeah, make it one of those "I.E. only" sites!) and watch MS lovers fight over
"quien es mas macho"
Is it mere coincidence that Monkey en espanol is mono?
My first thought was "Bah. Put solar panels on the roofs."
Then my brain kicked into gear, and I realized that data centers need a *minimum* of 100 watts per square foot, and preferably much more, but solar panels only deliver 10-15 watts per square foot. Oh well, so much for saving the environment and Silicon Valley's datacenter industry at the same time.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
As someone who grew up in Northern Ontario (Timmins), I would honestly say that you'll never see a data centre there. Why? No one wants to live there. :p
"...Concern about electricity pricing and volatility has led Microsoft to talk with its network manufacturers about building more efficient servers...."
I have heard that electricity is cheap in India and so are trained network administrators.
There are two things, which I can't understand why nobody is doing yet.
First is ducting. I've done this myself in a very small server room. If you have a pair of ducts connected to the air intakes of each machine, and a couple connected to the output of the exhaust fans, you can keep a system significantly cooler, with significantly less cooling, since the cold and hot air is being forced to the exact spots where you need it, and not being allowed to mix AT ALL. For each system, you're only talking perhaps $2 in one-time additional expense per server, which quickly pays for itself.
The other obvious option is geothermal cooling systems. If you're located near a river, lake, pond, ocean, etc., it's really trivially easy, and practically free, to utilize that to dramatically lower the energy demands from cooling (or heating for that matter). And even if that's not the case, it doesn't cost all that much to have numerous geothermal lines run into the ground.
You can probably maintain most of the HVAC systems you already have, only replacing the condenser units to fit the change to geothermal.
So, if there's something wrong with this idea, spell it out. Why aren't datacenters already taking these simple steps?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Hops add far more latency than distance
Not really. Switching is fast. Light is slow.
Distance is the #1 factor.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
Intrestingly enough, that is exactly what the German Goverment does, except they store their archives underground.
Specifically, 4038 billion kWh/year = 461 million kW. It's a measure of power; no need to multiply by time then divide by time. So in other words, at any given moment, 461 million kW are being generated/consumed in the U.S, apparently.
~CGameProgrammer( );
I guess thats probably my san background showing... always tend to think that hops are bad, but then we are usually dealing with much shorter distances...
Know a decent reference that covers international style networks in terms of performace - ie a decent technical overview without going into too much low level detail? Wouldn't mind refreshing myself..
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The comment implicit in your response is right. What I mean is that I agree with the idea that it all depends on what you're doing. For instance, my thought that "distance is bad, light is slow" comes mainly from my SAN background as well. I work for a company who, like others, plan data center locations all around the magical "fiber distance" metric. When you're running SRDF, your distances have to be reasonably short. We use Cisco's SSM cards to make use of Fibre Channel Write Acceleration to mitigate some of the effect of distance, but in the end... running a protocol that was meant to run in the timeframe of a few meters of almost light speed is going to have problems dealing with kilometers of light speed. That means that even though we'd love to run SRDF over the Atlantic ocean, it's not really possible without the help of SRDF-A (asynchronous).
As far as reference in that regard? Not sure. Really my comments just come from experience.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
I cant rememebr if its right or not - but I seem to recall using a metric of 1 hop adding 1ms latency - ie the same as 2km of fibre (to receive the laser transmission, switch/route and retransmit) not idea how accurate this was but since most of our kit was rated for a max distance of 15km it seemed a sensible measurement.
But then thinking on those terms 4000km of fibre is going to add 20ms in each direction or about the same as 20 hops (if the above metric is correct)
(oh and just incase my math looks odd you have to use 2/3 C rather than C for calculating transmission of light in fibre, which iirc is about the same as the transmission of electrical signals in wire also)
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