trans-Atlantic latency?

Fri Jun 29 14:15:51 UTC 2007

A reasonable latency to expect between Chicago and London would be 92ms
RTT.

Brian Knoll

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-nanog at merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog at merit.edu] On Behalf Of
Neal R
Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2007 6:21 PM
To: nanog at merit.edu
Subject: trans-Atlantic latency?

  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 ...