trans-Atlantic latency?

Thu Jun 28 23:20:31 UTC 2007

  I have a customer with IP transport from Sprint and McLeod and fiber
connectivity to Sprint in the Chicago area. The person making the
decisions is not a routing guy but is very sharp overall. He is
currently examining the latency on trans-Atlantic links and has fixed on
the idea that he needs 40ms or less to London through whatever carrier
he picks. He has spoken to someone at Cogent about a point to point link.

    What is a reasonable latency to see on a link of that distance? I
get the impression he is shopping for something that involves dilithium
crystal powered negative latency inducers, wormhole technology, or an
ethernet to tachyon bridge, but its been a long time (9/14/2001, to be
exact) since I've had a trans-Atlantic circuit under my care and things
were different back then.

      Anyone care to enlighten me on what these guys can reasonably
expect on such a link? My best guess is he'd like service from Colt
based on the type of customer he is trying to reach, but its a big
muddle and I don't get to talk to all of the players ...